The 'experts' have been telling us for years to cut down on fat in order to stay healthy and reduce body fat. But more recently, a growing number of nutritionists are telling us that dietary fats can help you burn fat. Which is true?

From the late 1960s up until the late 1990s, the prevailing school of thought was that because fat contained 37.8 kilojoules per gram, compared with 16.8 kJ for carbohydrate or protein, that the higher kilojoule delivery was the main culprit in the storage of body fat.

 

After decades of people having minimal success in reducing body fat by simply reducing dietary fat or counting kilojoules (or calories), the scientific spotlight was turned toward the actual metabolic and biochemical processes that led to body fat storage.

 

It became clear that in a large number of cases, body fat storage resulted from an excessive production of insulin that leads directly to the storage of fat. This excessive production of insulin has in the main been a result of prolonged intake of food that stimulates insulin production - foods with a high Glycaemic Index (GI), such as sugars and many refined complex carbohydrates. Foods that have a low GI do not cause the body to produce insulin as quickly or in such large amounts and therefore do not stimulate the storage of fat.

 

Both protein and dietary fats have the effect of reducing GI, thereby circumventing the insulin mediated fat storage.

 

The other 'downside' of low fat diets is that they reduce the body's ability to metabolise fats. In lay terms it is as though the body forgets how to metabolise them, whereas when fats are regularly eaten, as part of an appropriate PCF balance (protein, carbohydrate and fat), the body optimises its fat metabolism, using the fats as an energy source. If carbohydrates are too high, then the body will use them for fuel preferentially. However if they are kept to a moderate level, the body will use the fat for fuel.

 

Finally, dietary fats are a source of a range of 'essential fatty acids', nutrients vital for a host of functions in the body, including soft, supple skin, hormone production, nerve transmission and even controlling metabolism.