Dietary Fats that Reduce the Risk of Heart Disease
Jul 30th, 2011 by Giselle
Dietary fats have received such bad reputation that health advocates often eliminate this food group totally from their diets. This causes their intakes of omega 6, omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin E to become marginal. Find out which food items have the highest concentration of these nutrients as well as provide us with the right dietary fats for reducing the risk of heart disease.
Very Low Fat Diet is Inappropriate
The current nutritional paradigm for the prevention of heart disease often emphasise eating a low-fat diet. Unfortunately new studies released recently show beyond any shadow of doubt that low fat diets are not the optimal dietary strategy for reducing heart disease. In fact, the Mediterranean diet is quite promising for heart disease prevention. Why? Because this diet provides good quality dietary fats.
Good Dietary Fats Reduce Heart Disease Risk
According to Professor Jennie Brand Miller of Sydney University, the conventional low fat diets are inappropriate for reducing the risk of heart disease. In fact, in 2009, Jakobsen et al. pooled the data from 11 observational studies involving 344, 696 subjects, over a 4-10 year follow up with 5249 cases of heart attack and they found that replacing saturated fat (from meat sources) with polyunsaturated fat (from plant sources like nuts and seeds) significantly reduced the risk of heart disease. Here, we are talking about an amazing 26% reduction in heart disease risk which is very exciting!
Tables for Quality Dietary Fats
The tables below list the food items in order of decreasing density of each nutrient:
| Good plant sources of omega 6 fatty acids |
| Walnuts |
| Sunflower margarine |
| Sunflower oil |
| Sunflower seeds |
| Pine nuts |
| Sesame Seeds |
| Brazil nuts |
| Good plant sources of omega 3 fatty acids |
| Walnuts |
| Canola oil |
| Canola margarine |
| Sunflower margarine |
| Good plant sources of vitamin E |
| Sunflower seeds |
| Sunflower oils |
| Almonds |
| Hazel nuts |
Specific Foods for Best Dietary Fats
As you can see from the table above, some of the most nutrient-dense plant sources of omega 6, omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin E, are found in walnuts, sunflower seeds and almonds! Why not have a handful of them daily? Just substitute saturated fats with nutrient-rich polyunsaturated dietary fats.
References
Commonwealth Department of Health and Aging (Aust), Ministry of Health (NZ) and National Health and Medical Research Council. Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand. 2006.
Shrapnel B, Baghurst K. Adequacy of essential fatty acid, vitamin D and vitamin E intake: implications for the ‘core’ and ‘extras’ food group concept of the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. 2007; 64: 7885.
Shrapnel B. The importance of nutrient density in implementing recommendations for fats. Nutr Diet 2007; 64(Suppl.1): S40.
Jakobsen M U, Eilis J O, Heitmann B L, Pereira M A, Balter K B, Fraser G E, Goldbourt U, Hallmans G, Knekt P, Liu S, Pietinen P, Spiegelman D, Stevens J, Virtamo J, Willett W and Ascherio A. Major Types of dietary fat and risk of coronary heart disease: a pooled analysis of 11 cohort studies. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2009, 89 (5)
Delbridge E A, Prendergast L A, Pritchard J E and Proiette J. One –year weight maintenance after significant weight loss i healthy overweight and obese subjects: does diet composition matter? The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2009; 90: no. 5: 1203 to 1214.
Thanks for the info – great article as always.
Q. Do fat soluble nutrients/vitamins require fat in the meal to be absorbed through our gut?
You r the best.
Hi Jim,
Yes, fat soluble vitamins definitely require the presence of fat in the meal to be absorbed. That is why vitamins and minerals are best taken with meals for optimum absorption. In fact, this is one of the reasons why regular use of weight loss drug like Xenical (which act by inhibiting fat absorption leading to weight loss) often lead to reduction of our body’s stores of fat soluble vitamins like vitamins A, D, E and K.
On a different note, it might be worthwhile knowing that many heavy-handed weight loss methods like lap-banding, bariatric surgery and drugs like Xenical all cause malnutrition in the long run. For a variety of reasons, the serious complications that come with severely compromised nutritional status are significantly under reported.