fats Archives - Diabetes Counselling Online

Understanding cholesterol levels and improving them

October 6, 2014 by Sally 4 Comments

I often see clients who come to me with high cholesterol readings, even though they’re on a cholesterol medication. When we look at the cholesterol breakdown on their blood tests it often helps them to understand how they can make dietary/lifestyle improvements to help with their heart health. This blog intends to break down the various parts of the cholesterol blood test results and give you easy to understand tips in managing the different numbers.

Of course we know that it’s important to manage cholesterol, and especially so for us with diabetes. We know that people with diabetes are 3 to 4 times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease (including heart attack and stroke) than those who do not have diabetes. In addition, around 75% of all people with diabetes die from cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke.

I want to make the clear point that you should NOT make any changes to your medications without checking with your doctor first.

A basic explanation indicates that the total cholesterol number is made up of several smaller components, each that have a ‘healthy target’ range. Primarily these include:

Triglycerides
LDL (the bad cholesterol)
HDL (the good cholesterol)

In a nutshell we want to reduce the triglycerides and LDL numbers and increase the HDL (happy) cholesterol.

Triglycerides

Triglycerides are fairly easy to understand and also fairly easily managed through lifestyle changes. They are a form of fat that results from the breakdown of fats, poor quality carbs and alcohol in the diet and ‘high’ triglycerides are strongly linked with atherosclerosis (or artery plaque) that leads to heart attacks and strokes. This link is made stronger when the HDLs levels are lower and the LDL levels are higher. The tips below will show you how to achieve that.

LDL and HDL

I think this brief Wikipedia explanation works well here to provide the basic idea of how these work together before we move onto the food/lifestyle ways to improve the numbers from our blood test:

“Lipoprotein molecules enable the transportation of lipids (fats), such as cholesterol, phospholipids, and triglycerides, within the water around cells (extracellular fluid), including the bloodstream. Studies have shown that increasing levels of LDL particles (perhaps type-B, i.e. smaller particles, less so than type-A, larger LDL particles) are associated with health problems, including cardiovascular disease.

Although the nickname is simplistic and thus quite misleading, LDL particles (composed of thousands of various molecules) are often called bad cholesterol because they can transport their content of many fat molecules into artery walls, attract macrophages, and thus drive atherosclerosis. In contrast, HDL particles (composed of thousands of various molecules) are frequently referred to as good cholesterol or healthy cholesterol, because they can remove fat molecules from macrophages in the wall of arteries.”

How can we improve our results with diet?

Fortunately there’s been a lot of research conducted in this area, and I’m sure there’ll be much more to come in future. Being evidence-based, following the Australian Dietary Guidelines is always an excellent start. Then it’s all about ensuring there’s more of the good stuff than the bad.

The first three of the five guidelines summarise well how we can improve our dietary cholesterol, as well as our overall health. I’ll cover specifics after this, but feel it’s worth the reminder to read these first three guidelines yourself:

Guideline 1

To achieve and maintain a healthy weight, be physically active and choose amounts of nutritious food and drinks to meet your energy needs.

Children and adolescents should eat sufficient nutritious foods to grow and develop normally. They should be physically active every day and their growth should be checked regularly.
Older people should eat nutritious foods and keep physically active to help maintain muscle strength and a healthy weight.

Guideline 2

Enjoy a wide variety of nutritious foods from these five food groups every day:

Plenty of vegetables of different types and colours, and legumes/beans
Fruit
Grain (cereal) foods, mostly wholegrain and/or high cereal fibre varieties, such as breads, cereals, rice, pasta, noodles, polenta, couscous, oats, quinoa and barley
Lean meats and poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts and seeds, and legumes/beans
Milk, yoghurt, cheese and/or their alternatives, mostly reduced fat

And drink plenty of water.

Guideline 3

Limit intake of foods containing saturated fat, added salt, added sugars and alcohol.

Limit intake of foods high in saturated fat such as many biscuits, cakes, pastries, pies, processed meats, commercial burgers, pizza, fried foods, potato chips, crisps and other savoury snacks.
Replace high fat foods which contain predominately saturated fats such as butter, cream, cooking margarine, coconut and palm oil with foods which contain predominately polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats such as oils, spreads, nut butters/pastes and avocado.
Low fat diets are not suitable for children under the age of 2 years.

Limit intake of foods and drinks containing added salt

Read labels to choose lower sodium options among similar foods.
Do not add salt to foods in cooking or at the table.

Limit intake of foods and drinks containing added sugars such as confectionary, sugar-sweetened soft drinks and cordials, fruit drinks, vitamin waters, energy and sports drinks.
If you choose to drink alcohol, limit intake. For women who are pregnant, planning a pregnancy or breastfeeding, not drinking alcohol is the safest option.”

And now for some specifics:

1) Consume more of these foods

Plant foods – ensure you get your 5 serves of veg and 2 serves of fruit every day
Fibre – remembering there’s three types. Read up on fibre in a previous blog here.
Oats – full of beta glucans known to improve cholesterol levels. Read up on oats in a previous blog here.
Nuts – one to two 30g handfuls a day of mixed unsalted nuts can make a big difference. Read up on nuts in a previous blog here.
Oily fish and good fats – the omega-3 fats found in deep sea fish have anti-inflammatory properties and have been shown to improve heart health. Read more about the good fats in this previous blog.
Legumes – not enough of us eat enough of these amazing foods! Read more about them here, how to include more of them each day and how they’ll improve your health in so many ways.
Choose plant sterol fortified dairy products. This link from the Dietitians Association of Australia explains more.

2) Consume less of these foods/drinks

Sugar sweetened softdrinks
Processed fruit juice
Alcohol
High glycemic index/poor nutritional quality carbs – read more here to choose better carbs.
Saturated fats
Processed/junk foods

3) And do your best to increase your physical activity levels! The National Physical Activity Guidelines recommends:

Doing any physical activity is better than doing none. If you currently do no physical activity, start by doing some, and gradually build up to the recommended amount.
Be active on most, preferably all, days every week.
Accumulate 150 to 300 minutes (2 ½ to 5 hours) of moderate intensity physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes (1 ¼ to 2 ½ hours) of vigorous intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both moderate and vigorous activities, each week.
Do muscle strengthening activities on at least 2 days each week.

Hoping that’s made understanding how food and lifestyle affects your cholesterol levels a little clearer. Please let me know if you have any questions. Sally

Sally is the Social Media Dietitian with Diabetes Counselling Online, owner of her private practice (Marchini Nutrition), and has had type 1 diabetes for close to 40 years and coeliac disease for many years too. You can access a list of all Sally’s Diabetes Counselling Online blogs here.

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Back to basics on carbohydrate foods

August 25, 2014 by Sally Leave a Comment

So many people I see in my practice who’ve had diabetes for a while, when I ask them which foods contain carbohydrates they struggle to answer. So this is really a back to basics blog to remind us about which foods contain carbohydrate, why it’s important to recognise them, which foods don’t contain carbohydrate (or enough to worry about from a diabetes point of view) and a quick summary on quality and quantity issues. I hope it will also be helpful for those of you newly diagnosed with D.

Why is it important for people with diabetes to understand about carbohydrates?

The billions of cells in our body choose glucose as their fuel to help them keep us functioning properly. The food that we eat contains energy from carbohydrates, proteins and fats and it’s the carbohydrates that are broken down by our digestive system and becomes glucose in our bloodstream to fuel those busy cells. The proteins and fats play other key roles including repair, protection and communication and we need a quality balance of all three for wellbeing. The words I’ve highlighted here will take you other blogs on those topics if you feel like you need further information about them.

Of course with diabetes we need to manage how much glucose is in our bloodstream, which is why it’s important to understand how much carbohydrate is in different foods, and how both quality and quantity of the carbs we eat makes an impact. The glycemic index of the carbs we choose also makes a big impact, so I encourage you to read this blog to learn more about this important aspect of carbohydrates. The only time we need high-GI carbs is for hypo treatments, and this should be discussed with your D-team.

We can’t just cut carbohydrates out of our diet as our bodies need them for basic energy requirements, and many of the foods that contain carbohydrates also contain essential nutrients for our wellbeing. It’s also not sustainable to just eat protein, fat and non-starchy vegetables. So if we can learn how to choose quality carbohydrates in reasonable amounts it can make an enormous difference to both our diabetes management and our overall wellbeing.

Which foods contain carbohydrates?

A good place to start is the Australian Dietary Guidelines and the five food groups which all contain sources of carbohydrates:

Vegetables – mainly potato, sweet potato, corn and legumes/beans
Fruit
Grains (cereal) foods
Protein foods – really only the legumes/beans and some nuts.
Dairy

Carbohydrates from these five groups are necessary for our overall wellbeing. The idea with diabetes is to take the majority of your carb intake from these groups. Again, click the highlighted words to link to previous blogs written just on those topics.

Discretionary choices or ‘sometimes foods’

Most of these contain carbohydrates, and (sadly for some) they’re not ‘good’ carbs so you need to be aware when you choose foods like these that you’re likely to upset your blood glucose control and disrupt your wellness.

As outlined in the Australian Dietary Guidelines, discretionary choices include these types of foods below which you’ll notice, along with fats, salt and alcohol, also contain carbohydrates that will affect our blood glucose management:

Sweet biscuits, cakes and desserts
Processed meats and sausages
Ice-cream, confectionery and chocolate
Meat pies and other pastries
Commercial burgers, hot chips and fried foods
Crisps and other fatty and/or salty snacks
Cream and butter
Sugar-sweetened cordials, soft drinks, fruit drinks and sports drinks
Alcoholic drinks

Which foods don’t contain carbohydrates?

Most of the protein foods (other than legumes/beans and some nuts) are carbohydrate free, and fats are carbohydrate free.

Non-starchy vegetables are also fairly carbohydrate free, in that we don’t need to worry about ‘counting’ the carbs in them.

In terms of dairy, the one that tricks many is that cheese doesn’t contain (much) carbohydrate – again not enough to worry us for counting it.

It’s important to remember with these ‘carb-free’ foods, that many of them contain calories/kilojoules so will affect our weight which in turn can affect our diabetes, so it’s important to check with your dietitian as to how much of each you should be consuming.

How do I carbohydrate count?

This subject really depends on the type of diabetes you have as to how accurate you need to be with your carb counting.

As a general rule though, here in Australia we count 15g of carbohydrates in a serve of food as one carbohydrate serve. If it’s 3g less, then it’s half a serve, and 3g more than 15g is 1.5 serves.

For people with type 2 diabetes who are not on insulin, we often suggest a small fist size counts as one carb serve – think one piece of bread, one glass of milk, one piece of fruit, etc.

How many serves you have depends on you and your health professional’s personalised advice for you. In terms of a minimum amount of carbohydrate, you might like to read this blog discussing low carb diets.

There are some excellent free resources to find out how much carbohydrate is in different foods. There are lots of these available, but a few good examples include:

In Summary

If you can learn to recognise the carbohydrates in the foods you’re eating then you should also begin to see patterns emerging in your blood glucose control. Choosing nutritious, preferably low GI carbs spread evenly across the meals and snacks in your day should make a great difference in your diabetes management.

If you’d like to talk with others on this and other ‘diabetes and food’ topics, why not join our Diabetes Counselling Online popular Facebook closed group ‘Diabetes and Food – let’s celebrate it!’? We all love our food there, and have lots to celebrate about it.

As usual I recommend that you speak to your own Accredited Practising Dietitian for personalised advice, but hope that you found this blog helpful.

Sally

Sally is the Social Media Dietitian with Diabetes Counselling Online, owner of her private practice (Marchini Nutrition), and has had type 1 diabetes for close to 40 years and coeliac disease for many years too. You can access a list of all Sally’s Diabetes Counselling Online blogs here.

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Discussion on low carb diets

July 28, 2014 by Sally 8 Comments

Australian Guide to healthy eating poster

By popular demand through a thread in our Facebook group Diabetes and Food – let’s celebrate it!, this topic deserves a blog to help explain some of the ‘stuff we hear’ around carbohydrates and type 2 diabetes. I’d also encourage people with type 1 diabetes to read this though, because some of the points made are also relevant for us! Up front I will remind you that everyone has individual requirements and should see an Accredited Practising Dietitian for a personalised consultation, so this is a ‘general guide’ only.

Firstly we need to understand what ‘low’ means in such a context as in my experience as an Accredited Practising Dietitian, people tend to associate ‘low’ with ‘virtually no’ carbohydrate. We’ll also look at some of the evidence that shows that ‘low’ carb diets can help with glucose control in type 2s, and why when drugs (other than metformin or SGLT2-inhibitors) are introduced it’s important to ensure more (quality) carb intakes as advised by your health professionals. And lastly (but certainly not leastly) we’ll review how, based on the Australian Dietary Guidelines, it’s possible to have a nutritionally balanced diet while watching your carb intake.

What does ‘low’ carbohydrate mean?

If you ask some people what they think ‘low carb’ means, you may hear that it’s about cutting carbohydrates out as much as possible. Straight up as a dietitian my alarm bells ring as carbs feature in all five of the food groups that we need for nutrients to ensure our wellbeing: vegetables (starchy vegetables like potato, sweet potato and corn), fruit, dairy, protein (when the likes of legumes are included, and especially in vegetarian diets) and of course, the important grain/cereal foods.

The American Diabetes Association defines a low-carb diet as 130g of carb per day. Does that surprise you?? The ‘trick’ with low carb diets is therefore to know how to choose your carbs wisely so that you’re still meeting your nutrient requirements, and also to know what to replace that carb energy with (remembering that carbs, proteins and fats make up our daily energy intake) so you don’t get too hungry and be encouraged to ‘cheat’.

Remembering that there’s 15g of carbohydrate in an ‘exchange’ or ‘serve’ that gives us close to 9 carb serves across the day.

If you’re on medication that helps your body to produce more insulin, or you’re providing insulin yourself on a fixed dose then this idea is dangerous to your health so please speak to your health professionals before making any changes to your diet.

Some benefits of lower carbohydrate diets

Of course we know that all carbohydrates break down to glucose which is the fuel needed by our bodies, but in modern diets often too much (and poor quality) of this ‘fuel’ is provided which can cause stress to our organs and worsen our diabetes control. So understanding the benefits of a lower carbohydrate diet can help us to stick with it for longer and balance the rest of our diets more easily.

Some of those benefits may include:

Lower incidence of high blood glucose levels (hyperglycemia)
Lower amounts of medications need to control hyperglycemia
130g/day is a sustainable amount, meaning it’s easier to stick to in the longer term
Putting your pancreas under less stress to produce insulin, thereby helping it to keep working for longer
By ensuring your 130g/day is nutritious and low-GI carb you may also improve your blood fat levels (cholesterol/triglycerides) which will lower your risk of cardiovascular disease
It doesn’t necessarily lead to weight loss – that depends on your total energy intake.

How do you manage it best?

Again I will mention how important having a personalised consultation with your Accredited Practising Dietitian is because everyone is different in many ways. Here I will make suggestions that I hope will help to get your head around combining the idea of low carb into your daily routine while still meeting the nutritional requirements as outlined in the Australian Dietary Guidelines foundation diet (see page 2).

In a nutshell, it’s about only choosing your carb sources from the 5 food groups and balancing that out with quality proteins and healthy fats. I encourage you to re-read the previous blogs I’ve written on those topics as highlighted.

Remembering that 130g/day equates to close to 9 carb exchanges/serves, your day might start to look a bit like this:

Breakfast: ¼ cup of raw rolled oats (1 serve carb) served with 125ml light milk (half a serve), a small banana (85g – 1 carb serve) and a tablespoon of LSA mix (for extra fibre/protein) = 2.5 serves total

Morning Tea: A 100g tub of low-fat yogurt = 1 serve total

Lunch: A sandwich made on wholegrain bread (the grainer the better – 2 serves) made with a protein serve and as much non-starchy veg as you can handle, either on the sandwich or as a side, using half an avocado as the spread (for your good fats), and a piece of fruit such as an apple or pear (both good low-GI fruits – 1 serve) = 3 serves total

Afternoon Tea: A 30g handful of mixed unsalted nuts = not worth counting carb-wise

Dinner: Remembering the balanced plate being one quarter carb, one quarter protein and half non-starchy vegetables, this works with so many meals. Aim for your carb serve to = 2 serves total

Supper: You’ve still got half a carb serve up your sleeve. I would encourage something like half a slice of grainy toast with peanut butter on it to give you the energy to get you through the night, but half a serve of low-fat dairy would also work well, or even a couple of squares of dark chocolate if you fancied it = 0.5 serves total

In this example you can see that we’ve incorporated 9 carb serves/exchanges and yet have included quality carbs at every meal.

Some final tips

Remember to include protein and some non-starchy veg with every meal.
Rice and pasta can be problematic a serve size is so small. Something I recommend that works for many people is to include the carb serves in the form of legumes (lentils, chickpeas, kidney beans, etc) in the pasta sauce and use low-carb alternatives such as those made from konjac root, or make pasta/rice out of vegetables such as grated zucchini or carrot or cauliflower. I sometimes serve my pasta sauces on mashed cannellini beans and frozen spinach (warmed of course!) and find it’s very satisfying.
Don’t forget to exercise! If the point of minimising your carbs is to control your BGLs, then even as little as ten minutes exercise after meals can make a fantastic difference to your readings. Do some self-experimenting about how much your BGLs drop after say 10, 20 or 30 minutes walking after meals, and then if you want to include more quality carbohydrates in some meals, you’ll know how to manage better.

I hope this has proved useful for you, and that you have a better understanding of how a low-carb (130g/day) might help with your diabetes control. Of course please ask any questions below and I’ll be happy to address them for you.

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Blog 2 on Fats – which are the best types for us to enjoy?

July 21, 2014 by Sally 4 Comments

In today’s blog we’ll focus on which fats we should include in our diets, why this is so, and how much we should be having. Last week in the introduction to fats and d-health blog we talked about how it’s important for us, especially as people with or at risk of diabetes, to understand about the different types of fats, or fatty acids, and choosing the right fats in the right amounts can benefit our wellbeing in many ways. We explored what the different types of fats are and where they’re found, as well as how much the Australian Dietary Guidelines recommends for people with diabetes.

I need to keep this explanation relatively simple as fats and their pathways is actually quite a complex topic that, even with indepth study is tricky to explain in a short blog. I recommend that if you would like more detailed information that you go see your Accredited Practising Dietitian for personalised advice and further explanation. I also encourage you to remember that the Australian Dietary Guidelines Foundation Diet provides an excellent balance of nutrients for our wellbeing so is an excellent point of reference to know what we should be consuming for our wellbeing.

Off we go! The Mediterranean diet is currently being discussed as a very healthy way of eating, and research continues to back this up. If we just look at the fat types within that diet you’ll see a focus on monounsaturated fatty acids (being the predominant fatty acids in olive oil, canola oil, avocado and nuts) and the long chain omega-3 polyunsaturated acids (as found in deep sea fish and some plants). The research in this area is ongoing but at this stage it mostly indicates that diets higher in these types of fats help with weight maintenance as well as improving the quality of blood fats and longer term studies also showing reduced all cause mortality including cardiovascular disease.

There is also emerging evidence that demonstrates the importance of the ratio of saturated fats to anti-inflammatory fats that, being out of balance, is potentially a big cause for our Australian population’s high risk of cardiovascular disease.

Why is this important?

Recently released data through Australia’s Health 2014 that looks at the whole population and indicated that cardiovascular disease costs $7.7 billion or 10% of total expenditure and was also the leading cause of death. We also know that people with diabetes are 3 to 4 times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease (including heart attack and stroke) than those who do not have diabetes. In addition, around 75% of all people with diabetes die from cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke, and people with diabetes are up to six times more likely to suffer from atherosclerosis than people without diabetes.

The National Diabetes Services Scheme website also reminds us that “People with type 2 diabetes often have ‘abnormal’ levels of blood fats (cholesterol and triglycerides). Not only are the blood fat levels different to those of a person without diabetes, the cholesterol also tends to ‘behave’ differently.” All the more reason to heed the advice provided by the Australian Heart Foundation and backed up by the Dietitians Association of Australia to avoid those saturated and trans fats.

Although I have type 1 diabetes, I’m not willing to take chances of developing heart conditions (as the rest of our healthy population should consider too) so choose foods higher in monounsaturated fats and omega 3 polyunsaturated fats whenever I can, along with the low-GI carbs which are also known to help reduce blood fats compared with high-GI carbs.

Why those particular fats?

When we look at the reason (without going into miniscule detail) that we’re advised to choose monounsaturated and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats wherever possible, it is because monounsaturated fats are shown to follow non-inflammatory pathways and omega-3s (particular from deep-sea fish) promote anti-inflammatory reactions in our bodies. Compare that with saturated fats which are recognised as being pro-inflammatory (they cause inflammation, which causes detriment to our health in several ways).

There is also some evidence that the other main type of polyunsaturated fats, omega-6s, may be seen to take the inflammatory route and compete with the omega-3s. The jury is still out on this, and the potential inflammatory effect of omega 6 can be seen as merely an “interesting theory” at this stage. Accredited Practising Dietitian Sonia Navidi recently wrote about this issue in her blog (Nourish Me Simply), and it seems at this point in time to be a sensible view towards omega-6 fatty acids. Sonia writes:

“Interesting theory, but does it play out?

Actually, no, at least as far as the latest evidence is concerned. A Science Advisory from the American Heart Association, published in the prestigious journal Circulation in 2009, gives an excellent review of the evidence. They note that while Omega-6 acts as a precursor to compounds that promote inflammation in the body, it actually also acts as a precursor to compounds that are either anti-inflammatory, or help our arteries in other ways. They note that, while the theory of Omega-6 being pro-inflammatory has been around for a while, there is no solid evidence to support it.

They also state that:

“On the basis of the intakes of omega-6 [polyunsaturated fatty acids] used in the randomized trials, metabolic studies, and nonhuman primate studies discussed below, reductions in [coronary heart disease] risk might be expected with omega-6 [polyunsaturated fatty acid] intakes of 10% to 21% of energy compared with lower intakes, with no clinical evidence for adverse events.”

* Brackets inserted where the original source gave an acronym.”

So at this point in time the main fats to avoid are saturated and trans fats found in animal products as well as palm and coconut fats. Also, trying to ensure that we have plenty of omega 3s and monounsaturated fats in our diets.

If you’re interested in reading more about coconut oil being in this ‘avoidance’ group when it seems to be claimed as healthy by some on the internet, please read this explanation by the Dietitians Association of Australia.

How do I get more healthy fats in my life?

The Australian Heart Foundation has this very handy Omega-3 meal planner to help you reach the recommended 500mg/day for the general population. People with diabetes need more than this, but you should seek individualised advice from your health professionals/Accredited Practising Dietitians to know what’s right for you.

Let’s finish up today’s blog with some recipes containing healthy fats, remembering that the quality of the carbohydrate is also important.

Atlantic salmon has the highest amount of naturally occurring omega 3s of our Australian fish. This Salmon and White Bean Mash recipe will give you the omega 3s along with the nutritious and low-GI carbs of the white beans, and only 2 carb exchanges per serve.

As a vegetarian option how about these Cashew and Brazil Nut Burgers? You can read more about nuts in my blog, but generally speaking nuts are high in monounsaturated fats. You could swap the cous cous for quinoa to make it gluten free if you need to, and of course hummous is made on olive oil – also high in monounsaturated. This one has 2.5 carb exchanges per serve of nutritious low-GI carbs.

This Avocado and Four Bean pasta recipe looks and sounds delicious with only 1.5 carbohydrate exchanges per serve. The monounsaturated fats in the avocado will help to ensure a low glycemic index and will keep your hunger satisfied for longer too.

And there are lots more where these came from. To find these ones I went to some of my favourite recipe sites including Taste.com.au, Nuts for Life and Australian Healthy Food Guide and searched terms such as ‘salmon’, ‘healthy fats’, olive oil and then looked for ones with the qualities of good fats and low-GI nutritious carbs that are so important to us with diabetes.

In Summary

The take-home message is that we should be choosing more monounsaturated fats (good sources include olive and canola oil, avocadoes and nuts) and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats (good sources include deep sea fish, walnuts, linseeds and soy products), while reducing our intake of saturated fats (from animal based products, coconut and palm oil) and trans fats (found in many processed foods).

Please share any questions you have about this blog, let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to know about fats, and of course we’d love you to share your favourite recipes that you enjoy for good health.

Sally

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A fat introduction – blog 1 of a series on fats and diabetes

July 14, 2014 by Sally 2 Comments

I thought it was about time for another blog mini-series and fat is a topic that we see written about a lot so it’s easy to be misled when you’re provided with information that may be influenced by sales and marketing, and ‘fat’ is a huge topic to cover. The benefit of having such topics explained by an Accredited Practising Dietitian is that we’re not trying to sell you anything – just wanting to help you to make the best decisions for your d-health and we base our advice on the best available evidence through scientific research which is constantly being reviewed and updated where appropriate.

As an introduction I’ll remind you that fats are an important part of our diets, as are carbohydrates and proteins (these 3 being the major macronutrients that produce energy) and every cell in our body needs quality fats to protect it, help it communicate with other cells and to allow important biological processes to occur in our bodies. It’s important for us, especially as people with or at risk of diabetes, to understand about the different types of fats, or fatty acids, and choosing the right fats in the right amounts can benefit our wellbeing in many ways. In this blog I’ll explain what the different types of fats are and where they’re found, as well as how much the Australian Dietary Guidelines recommends for people with diabetes.

From a healthy weight perspective, the Australian Dietary Guidelines reminds us that, “When eaten in large amounts, all fats, including healthy fats, can contribute to weight gain. Fat is higher in energy (kilojoules) than any other nutrient and so eating less fat overall is likely to help with weight loss.” So again, it’s all about balance!

Something I found enlightening when learning about foods applies particularly with fats, in that they’re not black and white in the varying types, but more like differing shades of grey. To demonstrate my point, nuts are a perfect example. If you refer to page 2 of this tree nut ready reckoner you can see that every nut has a different amount of all the different types of fat within it. I make this point to reinforce that, as with most things in diabetes, it’s about making healthy choices whenever you can but not worrying too much about small amounts of things that we know we’re better without (such as saturated and trans fats).

Which is a perfect segway to talk about Types of Fats

I think the most straightforward explanation of the different types of fats is found on the Dietitian’s Association of Australia website where they explain:

“There are two main types of fats: saturated fats and unsaturated fats.

Saturated fats

Saturated fats are ‘unhealthy’ fats, and eating greater amounts of saturated fat is linked with an increased risk of heart disease and high blood cholesterol levels. These fats are solid at room temperature and are found in:

Animal-based products:

Dairy foods – such as butter, cream, full fat milk and cheese
Meat – such as fatty cuts of beef, pork and lamb, processed meats like salami, and chicken (especially chicken skin)

Some plant-derived products:

Palm oil
Coconut
Coconut milk and cream
Cooking margarine

Saturated fats are also commonly found in many manufactured and packaged foods such as:

Fatty snack foods
Deep fried take away foods
Cakes
Pastries and pies
Biscuits

Unsaturated fats

Unsaturated fats are ‘healthy’ fats and are an important part of a healthy diet. These fats help reduce the risk of heart disease and lower cholesterol levels (among other health benefits) when they replace saturated fats in the diet.

There are two main types of unsaturated fats: polyunsaturated fats and monounsaturated fats.

Polyunsaturated fats:

omega-3 fats which are found in fish
omega-6 fats which are found in some oils such as safflower and soybean oil, along with some nuts, including brazil nuts.

Monounsaturated fats:

found in olive and canola oil, avocados and some nuts, such as cashews and almonds.

Trans fats

Trans fats are unsaturated fats that have been processed and as a result, behave like saturated fats. Consumption of trans fats increase the levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol and decrease the levels of ‘good’ cholesterol in the body which is a major risk factor for heart disease. It is important to lower the amounts of trans fats you eat to help improve your health.

Trans fats are found in many processed foods, also in butter and some margarines. When buying these products check the labels and choose the varieties that are lower in saturated and trans fats and higher in poly and monounsaturated fats.”

In summary, we should aim to have most of our fat intake from mono- and poly-unsaturated fats.

How much should we have?

You may remember from my blog on label reading that on nutrition information panels we should aim for less than 10g/100g total fat, and less than 2g/100g saturated fats. This is because people with diabetes tend to have higher rates of bad cholesterol, and reducing amounts of saturated fats (and poor quality carbohydrates) is one of the most effective ways of reducing that bad cholesterol.

The Australian Dietary Guidelines advises that in addition to the serves outlined for the five food groups, “an allowance for unsaturated spreads and oils for cooking, or nuts and seeds can be included in the following quantities: 28-40g per day for men less than 70 years of age, and 14-20g per day for women and older men.”

That’s probably enough info for this first blog. If you have specific fat-related questions that you’d like answered in the rest of the fat-series, just comment below and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.

Also remember to see your Accredited Practising Dietitian if you think some personalised advice could be useful, or arrange for an e-consultation with our e-dietitian at Diabetes Counselling Online.

Wishing you a great week! Sally

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