Always, Sometimes, Never

This week was "fats week" in most of the healthy cooking classes I coordinate. No, we didn't talk about how to lose weight, or measure how much fat content we have on our bodies. I spent a lot of time teaching, and my participants spent a lot of time learning, about lean cooking techniques and the differences among unsaturated versus saturated versus trans fats - which category do nuts fall under? what about cheese? which should I eat more often, chicken or lean ground beef? (answers: unsaturated, saturated, chicken). I've taught this lesson at least three dozen times over the past year and a half, and each time it is amazing to see how much of an impact the information on this topic has on people's idea of what "healthy cooking" means. This week as I was teaching, I realized that many of the readers of this blog might have similar sorts of questions as my participants, with regard to which fats we should or should not be eating - or what the difference among these fats even are! So, I decided it is time that I give you all the low-down on fats, especially oils vs. butter vs. margarine. Be warned, this post is long, but it may rock your world.


In order to give you advice on those three ingredients, I need to give some background info about the three different types of fats: unsaturated, saturated, and trans. Don't worry, this isn't going to be a chemistry lecture. In the healthy cooking classes I coordinate, we teach the fats according to a stoplight: green = unsaturated, yellow = saturated, red = trans. However, I like to think of the fats in terms of the frequency with which I should use and consume them: always, sometimes, never. Our bodies need fat (going on a no-fat diet will literally kill you), but there are certain types of fats that are better for us to have - certain fats we should always turn to, sometimes indulge in, and never let enter our bodies.


You should always turn to foods with unsaturated fat, which raises your good cholesterol (yay!). Found in: plants & fish! Avocados, tree nuts, peanuts, nut butters, oils (olive, canola, vegetable, soy, coconut), salmon, tuna, and other fish. 


You should sometimes eat food with saturated fat, which raises your bad cholesterol (sad...). Found in: animal products! Milk, ice cream, yogurt, cheese, butter, and meat* of any kind.
*Certain types and cuts of meat have less saturated fat than others, but the details of that can be saved for another blog post. All you need to know right now is that all meat has saturated fat in it, and that white meat (chicken, turkey) is leaner than red meat (beef, pork - the commercials say "pork, the other white meat" BUT the properties and effects of this meat are more similar to that of red meat...oh how the media tricks us).


You should try to NEVER eat foods with trans fat, which lowers your good cholesterol and raises your bad cholesterol (yikes! double whammy!). Found in: any product with the word hydrogenated* in the ingredient list (i.e. a lot of highly processed foods) and rare traces exist in meat & dairy products (like, really rare): Crisco, Land O' Lakes margarine, Ritz crackers, Fig Newtons, Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, Nabisco Graham Crackers, Hostess Cupcakes, Drake's Yodels, Pop Tarts, Doritos, and my most recent (like, as of two days ago) discovery, girl scout cookies (tears almost welled up in my eyes upon this discovery).
*BEWARE: Even if the nutrition label of a product says 0g of trans fat, the product may contain trans fat. How is this possible? Well, food companies worked it out so that if there are 0.5 or fewer grams of trans fat in 1 serving of the product, they can "round down" and say 0g of trans fat on the nutrition label. BUT as soon as you eat more than 1 serving, you are consuming more than 0.5g of trans fat. So, read your labels! If you see the word "hydrogenated" then the product contains trans fat.


Some of you are probably thinking, "yea right, I'm not going to give up girl scout cookies! And Ritz crackers, I love those!". And okay, maybe the girl scout cookies are just one thing you won't say "no" to. But hear me out. All you have to do is google "studies on trans fat", or wikipedia "trans fat", and an amalgamation of information (based on long-term studies and years of research) will pop up, showing how trans fats are significantly (I can't emphasize this enough) correlated with coronary heart disease, and linked to other illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer, obesity, and depression. Think about the foods (if you can even call them "food") that I listed above...all of them are incredibly processed. Do you really want all that crap, in addition to the trans fat, in your body anyways? We know the Western diet sucks, and this is just another instance where you have the ability to really, truly, and actively avoid a certain ingredient, so that you can live a healthy and long life.  


So what does this mean for oils, butter, and margarine? I'm sure you've guessed by now: 
Always turn to oils when you need some sort of fat with which to cook. Whether it's sautéing veggies, cooking a piece of meat in a skillet, roasting some potatoes in the oven, or making scrambled eggs for breakfast, your first and most frequent choice should be heart-and-cholesterol-friendly oils (olive, canola, vegetable, peanut, coconut, grapeseed, walnut, hemp, etc.).
Sometimes turn to butter. When you're making a recipe that you know is a bit of an indulgence - something you only eat every once in a while, like buttery mashed potatoes, a quiche with onions sauteed in butter, or a chocolate cake made with 2 sticks of butter (not to mention the frosting...) - don't forgo the awesome taste that butter lends to these dishes. But these are sometimes foods. If you eat scrambled eggs every day, then use oil during the week, and on Saturday indulge in butter instead. If you like to sauté your vegetables for dinner (with pasta, rice, or as a side dish to meat), use oils as much as possible and every once in a while treat yourself with something like butternut squash roasted with butter and brown sugar. Again, butter is a sometimes ingredient.
Never use margarines or butter substitutes that contain the word hydrogenated in the ingredient list (partially hydrogenated and/or fully hydrogenated). Many butter substitutes, like I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light, have changed their recipe to omit hydrogenated oils because of the media hype around the health risks of trans fat. But you still need to read your labels. And honestly, anything you might want to use a butter substitute for - like spreading some on a bagel, or using some on top of a baked potato - are all instances where you're better off using real butter instead. Unless you slab on heaps of butter onto your toast, a teaspoon of butter is 100000x better for you than a teaspoon of hydrogenated margarine. 


So, go into your fridge, look at the margarine or butter substitute you might own, and see if "hydrogenated" is anywhere in the ingredient list. If it is, toss it out NOW. Go buy a pack of unsalted butter. Use that butter in moderation, and for everything else, use some oil. Remember: always, sometimes, never.