Replace Harmful Fats With Healthful Fats

step four is to replace harmful fats with healthful fats and so when we talk about fat we want to focus light with carbohydrates or like with protein we want to focus on quality we want to make whole plant foods the primary sources of our fat high-fat plant foods are rich in all of the goodies that we were talking but the fiber and antioxidants and sterols and stanols and phytochemicals whereas concentrated fats and oils have a lot of calories with few nutrients ok so again it’s like sugar they’re not poisoned but they’re processed foods you’ve extracted them from the food and you’ve left the fiber and the good stuff behind just like you do with sugar and so just to give you an example this is sunflower seeds versus sunflower oil so you can see the oil so we’re using a hundred and twenty calories worth of oil which is one tablespoon and a hundred and twenty calories worth of seeds which is two thirds of an ounce okay so we’re comparing equal calories from both fat you get about 14 grams of fat in a tablespoon of the oil and about eleven from a tablespoon of the seeds but look at the other macronutrients no protein no carbohydrate in the oil you get about four grams of protein from the seeds look at the minerals zero zero zero zero zero in the oil and you get you know reasonable amounts from the seeds and it’s the same with vitamins now vitamin E is the only exception oils often contain vitamin E but there’s more in the seeds and then I didn’t have room to list all of the other vitamins but there’s zero zero zero zero zero for the oil and they’re fairly high for the seeds you can see fall in folic acid here as an example so very very important to be getting your calories from whole foods as opposed to highly processed foods we want to cut back on saturated fat the American Heart Association in the American College of Cardiology in their guidelines for heart disease risk reduction come in no more than five to six percent of calories from saturated fat which is about what most vegans get so five to six percent of calories is about 16 grams on a 2,000 calorie diet if you look at the amount in animal products two slices of meat lovers Pizza 22 18 and a double cheeseburger 16 in a soft taco with beef and cheese nine and an ounce of cheese aid in a cup of whole milk that adds up to 16 pretty quickly when you’re eating these kinds of foods whereas in plant foods it’s much lower amounts with the exception of coconut products but you can see avocado nuts and seeds tofu olives are very very low you would have to eat a lot of them to get 16 grams of saturated fat and then finally we want to minimize our exposure to damaged fats so these are high highly oxidized fats they produce aldehydes and acetylenes and all of these things that are toxic so we want to avoid fried and highly processed foods we want to avoid or minimize oils and cooking and if you do use oils and you’re cooking you don’t want to let the oil smoke because more of these compounds are formed and you want to store high-fat foods carefully so nuts and seeds are protected by a hard shell when that hard shell is removed the fats become subject to oxidation especially if there’s if they’re unsaturated like walnuts and so when whenever i buy nuts and seeds they go in the freezer immediately the freezer or the refrigerator to help protect the the fats then you want to ensure sufficient omega-3 fatty acids so for most people who don’t eat fish 2 to 4 grams a day would be a good amount to aim for so how do we get that will an ounce of walnuts a tablespoon of ground flaxseed a tablespoon of of chia seeds or two a probably about three tablespoons of hemp seeds or about twenty to forty cups of greens so you can see greens could contribute if you’re eating a lot of them but you would have to eat like a horse or a cow to get 20 to 40 cups a day so it’s a lot so you need to have some seeds or some nuts in the mix at least it’s very helpful so what about EPA and DHA these long-chain omega-3s from fish actually fish don’t make EPA and DHA they’re made by micro algae and the micro algae is in plants in the ocean and they get into fish because at some point along the food chain the small fish ate the zooplankton wheat ate the phytoplankton which ate the mic microalgae so that’s how they get into fish and so now people culture the microalgae no raping of the oceans just culture the microalgae and you can purchase it in supplement form and it’s not a bad idea to take it if you do probably two to three hundred milligrams a day is recommended some people may need more to get their omega-3s up to where they need to be