Good fats can find a place in your healthy food plan

A recent article I recently read online stated: "The low-fat craze has long since passed."

I agree, and I'm pleased.

It's true that back in the early 90s low-fat and no-fat foods suckered me, just as they did many others. At that time, I believed fat-free oatmeal cookies were harmless and I could eat as many as I wanted without weight gain.

What made low-fat food plans so appealing was the calories they cut. One fat gram delivers nine calories; a gram of carbohydrate or protein delivers just four. And, since fats were the nutritional bad boys of the 90s, banishing them and shrinking calories seemed like a great deal.

However, when many food manufacturers trimmed the fat, they added sugars; sometimes lots of it. Reducing fat didn't make us fat; added sugars did. According to the USDA, during low-fat's heyday from 1990 to 2000, annual per-person sugars consumption rose by 16.5 pounds. That's almost 29,000 calories and says to me, we traded fat-free sugars' calories for fat calories. Not the wisest trade-off.

Those nutritionally bankrupt calories coming from sugars (all fat free), white flour (very low fat) and highly-processed carbohydrates (mostly low in fat) could, and did, make me fat again and millions of Americans grew fat right along with me.

In the 18 years that I've been writing about low-fat food plans and cooking I (and others) have come to learn that the "craze" has indeed passed and low-fat eating has become just one component of a healthy food plan.

A healthy food plan does, indeed, need some fat. But it needs the right kind of fat, the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. These good fats support or raise your HDL (the good cholesterol) and aren't supposed to raise your LDL levels (bad cholesterol).

We still need to watch out for the bad guys - saturated and trans (hydrogenated) fats. Both of these fats are known to raise your LDLs and lower your HDLs.

So which vegetable or nut oil is the best at maintaining health? Since they're all blends of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and saturated fat the question is not an easy one to answer.

Based on USDA statistics, olive oil has almost twice the saturated fat of canola oil (13.8 percent versus 7.4); yet olive oil has 15 percent more monounsaturated fat (the healthy fat) than canola (73 percent versus 63.3). I choose olive oil for its higher monounsaturated fat levels and appealing flavor profile.

Coconut oil ranks highest in saturated fat at 86 percent, so it's best to be avoided. Butter comes in second with a saturated fat level at 51.4 percent.

If you want cooking oil with the best fat profile, try high oleic sunflower oil with 83.7 percent monounsaturated fat and a fairly low 9.8 percent saturated fat.

So yes, I have fat in my diet, but as long as I use healthy oils in reasonable quantities and keep a sharp eye out for added sugars, I won't become the not-so-lean wizard again.

Try this recipe: I spotted a package of reasonably priced organic skinless, boneless chicken thighs but my schedule left me short on time to prepare them. Necessity created this skillet-to-oven-to-table recipe. Enjoy!

• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write him at don@theleanwizard.com.

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<li><a href="/story/?id=369539">Skillet-to-Oven-to-Table Chicken Thighs</a></li>

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