The popular perception of fats is that they not only make you fat, they increase your risk of a number of health problems such as heart disease, stroke and some cancers
But not all fats are bad. The good ones include the fats in the polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) family, and are known as ‘essential fats’, or more properly ‘essential fatty acids’ (EFAs). This is because, like vitamins, they are vital to health and cannot be made by the human body – they must be obtained from diet. Unfortunately, as a result of changes in British eating habits, levels of some of these valuable EFAs are unhealthily low, while in far too many people levels of the bad, saturated fats are too high.
There are two types of EFA important to human health – the omega-6 type and the omega-3 type. The names arise from their chemical structure. Although they are similar, the two types are distinct. Since one type cannot be converted into the other, both must be present in the diet in a proper balance for good health.
