A Consumer's Guide to Fats
by Eleanor Mayfield

Once upon a time, we didn't know anything about fat except that it made foods tastier. We cooked our food in lard or shortening. We spread butter on our breakfast toast and plopped sour cream on our baked potatoes. Farmers bred their animals to produce milk with high butterfat content and meat "marbled" with fat because that was what most people wanted to eat.

But ever since word got out that diets high in fat are related to heart disease, things have become more complicated. Experts tell us there are several different kinds of fat, some of them worse for us than others. In addition to saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, there are triglycerides, trans fatty acids, and omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids.

Most people have learned something about cholesterol, and many of us have been to the doctor for a blood test to learn our cholesterol "number." Now, however, it turns out that there's more than one kind of cholesterol, too.

Almost every day there are newspaper reports of new studies or recommendations about what to eat or what not to eat: Lard is bad, olive oil is good, margarine is better for you than butter--then again, maybe it's not.

Amid the welter of confusing terms and conflicting details, consumers are often baffled about how to improve their diets. Clearly, though, consumers are interested in obtaining this information. In a poll conducted by Nielsen Marketing Research, people were asked to select the food qualities that were "very important" to them, and knowing which foods were low in fat and cholesterol ranked highest:

FDA regulations enable consumers to see clearly on a food product's label how much and what kind of fat the product contains. Understanding the terms used to discuss fat is crucial if you want to make sure your diet is within recommended guidelines. Triglycerides and VLDL

Triglyceride is another form in which fat is transported through the blood to the body tissues. Most of the body's stored fat is in the form of triglycerides. Another lipoprotein--very low-density lipoprotein, or VLDL--has the job of carrying triglycerides in the blood. NHLBI considers a triglyceride level below 200 mg/dl to be normal.

It is not clear whether high levels of triglycerides alone increase an individual's risk of heart disease. However, they may be an important clue that someone is at risk of heart disease for other reasons. Many people who have elevated triglycerides also have high LDL-cholesterol or low HDL-cholesterol. People with diabetes or kidney disease--two conditions that increase the risk of heart disease--are also prone to high triglycerides.

Food and Drug Administration Publication No. (FDA) 99-2286