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Healthy California

Fats: Friend, Foe, or Functional Fuel?

August 24, 2025 • Linda Brown, MPT • Season 1 • Episode 26

0:00 | 34:57

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Today we’re diving into a subject that often sparks confusion and controversy: fat. Last week, we explored sugar, and next week we’ll round out the macronutrient trio with protein. But today, it’s all about unpacking the complex world of dietary fats—what they are, why we need them, and how to make smarter choices for better health.

We’ll break down the different types of fats—saturated, unsaturated, trans fats, triglycerides, and cholesterol—clarifying their roles in the body. From energy storage and hormone production to brain health and cell membrane integrity, fats aren’t the villains they’ve been made out to be. In fact, healthy fats like omega-3s, olive oil, avocado, and coconut oil can protect against inflammation, support cognitive health, and help regulate appetite.

But not all fats are created equal. We’ll also cover the dangers of trans fats and poor-quality oils, their role in inflammation, and how processed foods sneak them into our diets.

By the end of this episode, you’ll understand why eating fat does not make you fat—and how thoughtful choices can protect your heart, brain, and long-term health.

Stay healthy, California—you’ve got this!

Thank you for listening to Healthy California.

If you have tried all my suggestions and are still having trouble with your health, and would like an appointment with me, please email me, text, or call me via the contact information below.

My contact:

Linda Brown, MPT, Doctoral Candidate Functional Nutrition

916-426-2543

linda@heal-throughfood.com

www.heal-throughfood.com

Transcript

All right. Thank you for joining me, California. Welcome back. My name is Linda Brown. I am the host of healthy California. And today we are going to talk about fat. Last time we talked about sugar or carbs and this time we're talking about fat.

Next week we will talk about protein. So that's our macros.

Macros are proteins, carbs and fats. We've already talked about carbs. We're talking about fats today. Fat is a little bit more involved than you would imagine, so we'll go over that. We're going to unpack the complex world of dietary fat. We're going to explore the benefits, the risks, and how to make.

Informed choices. We need that from brain health to inflammation.

We'll dive into the science and then help you rethink what you thought about what you knew about that. So first let's define what that is. We have different types of fat. We have saturated fat, unsaturated fat, trans fat, triglycerides, and cholesterol. So saturated fats is typically fats found in animal products.

We usually think of fat as being solid at room temperature now. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature, so that would be considered a saturated fat, although it's not an animal fat, it's still a saturated fat.

And it's also more stable at high high heat. So it is more stable to cook with saturated fats and saturated means. You know, why do they call it saturated? What's it saturated with? It's saturated with hydrogen molecules.

So that's what saturated means. It means it's saturated with hydrogen unsaturated includes, mono unsaturated and polyunsaturated. Unsaturated means that it is not saturated with hydrogen molecules. There are some of the carbon elements that are double bonded, which means they're not completely bonded with hydrogens. That's all that means mono unsaturated fats include olive oil and avocado oil, just to name a few, and again, they are oils at room temperature.

And polyunsaturated fats we normally think of our omegas like omega-3, Omega 6, flaxseed oils. Those are polyunsaturated fats and we're going to talk about seed oils another time. So I'm not going to. I'm not going to talk about seed oils this time but I I want to talk about unsaturated fats just a little bit more because unsaturated fats, the oxidize easier, and so they're easier to break apart.

That's a good thing, and it's a bad thing. It's a bad thing when it comes to cooking, but it's a good thing when it comes to trying to to do processes in our body, because our body can break it down a little bit better. So that's unsaturated, unsaturated, just means that if there's a double bond on one of the carbons, which then doesn't allow hydrogen to be fully saturated on that carbon, and if that double bond is on the 3rd carbon, it's called the omega-3.

If its double bonded on the 6th carbon. It's called the Omega 6 and they have the same thing for Omega Nines and there's a new one out called Omega 15. You know, it's normally on an odd numbered carbon and that part you don't necessarily need to know. It's just I just thought it was interesting on how they got the name Omega-3 Omega 6.

So that's just a little FYI. And again, we'll talk about seed oils another time because that's a whole episode, a whole another podcast.

And then in addition to saturated fats and unsaturated fats, we have trans fats. Trans fats are artificial.

They're hydrogenated oil.

Which just means that we will put hydrogens on the places where there is no hydrogen. So we are hydrogenating that fat, that it's a fat chain or a fatty like a fatty acid chain or a fatty acid tail. It's just a it's a chain of carbons with hydrogens attached.

So that's hydrogenated and hydrogenated fats, or hydrogenated oils, is highly associated with inflammation. And so cardiovascular disease. When we think of hydrogenated oils or trans fats, we think of margarines vegetable shortening. Anything that says hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated stay away from those. Those are trans fats and you'll find them a lot in processed foods, which is the reason why processed food. One of the reasons why processed food are not good for you, so that's trans fats. Then you have a triglycerides. Triglycerides are the most common type of fat in the body. It's stored. Energy is what triglycerides is. We need triglycerides. We need fats.

When we have excess carbs in our body, it's converted to triglycerides and then stored in our adipose tissue for later use to use as fuel. Triglyceride is a fuel for our body.

However, we have a lot of fuel storage on our body these are triglycerides.

On a lab, we want to see our triglycerides low triglycerides are transported through our blood in these lipoproteins.

And they are transported in these VLDL so very low density lipoproteins.

So that's, we'll talk about that here in a second. So that's triglyceride. So we've talked about saturated fats, unsaturated fats, trans fats, triglycerides and then we have cholesterol. Well, cholesterol is a type of fat.

And cholesterol actually has a relatively small effect on our blood cholesterol compared to our trans fats. So trans fats is so much worse for you than cholesterol. People are so worried about their cholesterol. It's not the cholesterol we need to be worrying about. It's our trans fats. And actually our triglycerides.

Cholesterol is needed to make cell membranes.

Cholesterol is needed for to make hormones.

Cholesterol converts into vitamin D in the skin when exposed to sunlight, it makes bile. It helps absorb our fat soluble vitamin, so that's vitamin DAK&E. And then 25% of cholesterol is in the brain.

So it's critical for nerve insulation, like the myelin sheaths that surround every single nerve.

And it's needed for neurotransmission. Which then means that we are able to learn better, have better memory, mood regulation. It's just good for our nervous system in general, therefore our brain.

Now, if you think about fat in general, we have a a double layer of fat around every single cell. We call it a phospholipid bilayer means 2 layers, so a phospholipid lipid, meaning fat. So a phospholipid bilayer. We have one.

On the inside of the cell and then one on the outside of the cell so that layer that healthy phospholipid bilayer is necessary to keep things in and to keep things out. And if we don't have good healthy.

Fat than our cell membranes are not going to be healthy and so things can come into our cells that are not supposed to be there or things can leave our cells that aren't supposed to be leaving ourselves. So I want you to picture a nice healthy fat layer around every single cell in our body.

And imagine that not being healthy.

So in our phospholipid bilayer of every single cell in our body, it's made-up of fat. But it's made-up of so much more. In addition to that, we have cholesterol that's in that bilayer. We have markers. We have hormone markers that signal signaling markers. I should say. So. There's a lot of things in our cell membranes that need to be there so our cell membranes need to be healthy and having a good, healthy fat is necessary for that.

So cholesterol, when we think of cholesterol, we think of LDL and HDL.

LDL stands for low density lipoprotein LDL. Low density means it's not dense, which if you think about a pillow, it's not dense. Well that low density lipoprotein is a bit. It's a carrier of fats and.

Or like cholesterols and vitamins. And it's a carrier because it's trying to get from our liver to our tissue and deliver what's supposed to be there. So LDL cholesterol comes from the liver and delivers things from the liver to the tissue.

Again, it's carrying cholesterol, hormones, vitamins.

And these low density lipoproteins can penetrate the linings of our vessels.

And these linings of our vessels are very loose, they're intended to be loose the vessels because things from our blood have to leave our blood to go to our tissue. And then from our tissue to go to our blood. So it can be transported where it's supposed to be transported. So these the linings of our vessels are actually pretty loose and porous.

And so these low density lipoproteins can make its way out of the vessel and kind of justice stay there in that the lining of the vessel and then it becomes oxidized and it's the oxidized LDL we have to worry about, not the LDL. When you get your labs done for your cholesterol.

You need to know what your oxidized LDL is. It's oxidized by free radicals, and if you think about what oxidation means.

Oxidation just means it's lost an electron.

It's lost an electron, so then it has a charge. You have an electron floating around as a negative charge, and then you have the the LDL lipoprotein that's in the vessel wall. That then has a positive charge because it's lost the electron, the electron. So now you have these two different charges.

Kind of hanging out there and when you have something that's charged, it's very reactive and that oxidation or the oxidized LDL that triggers an immune response.

And overtime, this builds up in your vessels and your vessels becoming healthy because that immune response is coming to that vessel as if it's injured. It's an inflammatory response.

Now, if you think about what oxidized means, think about an anti oxidant. We eat antioxidants, we take it in our diet to counteract those free radicals. That's the intention. So our body naturally oxidizes things. It's what we do. We have all these electrical charges in us. Electrons pop on and off all the time. That's what it's supposed to do. But we can counteract that with our antioxidants. So we run into trouble.

When there's an imbalance of these oxidized or free radicals in our body and nothing to counteract that in the form of antioxidants.

When we don't have a healthy diet, we don't have a way to counteract those free radicals

So then in the case of our blood vessels, these LDL are leaving the blood vessels into the wall, becoming oxidized. We aren't healing that because we don't have enough antioxidants in us. And then we run into an inflamed and injured tissue and then our vessel.

Vessels become stiff and that is why our our vessel walls become stiff. It's an inflammatory response.

And you've heard me say this before. Many diseases are because of inflammatory response and that's how that works. So that's your LDL. Now you have an HDL, HDL cholesterol, HDL stands for high density lipoprotein and these HDL are coming from the tissue going to the liver. So the the LDL is coming from the liver, delivering things to the tissue and then the HDL is coming from the tissue and bringing things back to the liver.

But high density means that it's already gotten rid of all the cholesterols and the vitamins, and it's just taking things back to the liver to be processed or recycled and it's it can carry back some cholesterol back to the liver to be processed. It can be used to make more hormones.

Because we need cholesterol to make hormones.

And then it also can be made into cell membranes or bile acid, or it can be excreted and HDL we think of as our good cholesterol.

But there's really kind of a balance between LDL and HDL we if we have high LDL, we want to have a good balance of high HDL as well. In addition to that, we also need to be having a healthy diet.

And a good ratio of total cholesterol to HDL is like a 3 1/2 to one ratio.

So your total cholesterol is 3 1/2 times as much as your HDL.

So that is the definition of the different types of fats, saturated fats, unsaturated fats, trans fats, triglycerides and then your cholesterols.

So why is this important?

Well, in our body I had mentioned already, we definitely need it for our cell membranes because our cell membranes keep things out of our cells and hold things into our cells. And it's very selective on what comes in and out of our cells. So we need that membrane to be healthy and it is a phospholipid bilayer. So it's made of fat.

And it has cholesterol in that as well. So we need cholesterol. Our body makes it so it's not essential, but we need it. We should not be afraid of cholesterol.

So we need it for cell membrane integrity. We need it to make hormones, especially sex hormones.

And vitamin D we need it for brain function and mood regulation. Brain functions. You know, you've probably heard people say that your brain is fat, and that's somewhat true.

Because every single nerve in our body, the nerve. So the the nerve in our brain has this long tail that goes to some place in your body and it's it's a communication highway and that long nerve tail it's called an Axon. It is wrapped by fat. A fat tissue called myelin. So we have every single nerve in our body is layered by fat, so we need that fat and it's layered by fat for protection, but also for transmission when we don't have fat around our nerves, our transmission from one place to the other slows way down.

So we need it for transmission, nerve impulse transmission.

And also mood regulation, we also need fat for or to absorb our fat soluble vitamins cause fat likes fat. So vitamin A vitamin D, vitamin E and vitamin K those are our fat soluble vitamins.

That's why fat is important.

So how does this affect you? Well, we always think about cholesterol and cholesterol is so demonized. Yet I just explained how cholesterol is so necessary. So let's look at some of the pros and cons of fats in general, pros of fats.

The pro of Fats is cognitive health. We need omegas to support memory focus and it reduces neurodegenerative disease.

A neurodegenerative disease may be Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Ms. multiple sclerosis, dementia, memory loss, brain fog. Those are all neurodegenerative diseases.

When I say neurodegenerative, that means the nerve is degenerating.

It's breaking down, so if it's a neurodegenerative disease, that implies that it is degenerating unless you do something about it, it's going to keep progressing unless you do something about it.

And you can do something about it by increasing good fats in your diet.

Another pro for fat satiety and weight management.

Well, weight management, I thought fat made you fat. Fat does not make you fat. Eating fat does not make you fat.

When you eat fat, it makes you more satiated, which means it makes you feel full. And if you are feeling more full then that's going to control your it's going to help control your weight and your hunger.

Fat digests slowly. It doesn't digest as fast as carbs.

You know the body takes time to process it and then it stores it. If we don't use it. If we don't use it for energy.

And that also helps regulate appetite because it makes you satiated and blood sugar.

And that's healthy fat.

Another pro for Fat is it's anti-inflammatory.

Which does not make sense, does it because when we have that in our body, that is very inflammatory, but fat in our diet, good fat in our diet is anti-inflammatory. So that's like our Omega threes, our avocado oils or olive oils, those are actually anti-inflammatory. Our monounsaturated fats, they're good for us.

We need to have a good quality fat in our diet.

And then another pro for fat is the ability to absorb our good fat soluble vitamins. We know vitamin D has so many benefits, including brain health, and it's also an anti-inflammatory. There's a lot of things about vitamin D that's important. That's why everyone's on it.

And then of course we need all the vitamins ADE&K they're all considered anti-inflammatory. So we need fat for cognitive health, weight management, feeling satiated, anti-inflammatory and nutrient absorption.

I mean, that's a good enough reason for me to have good quality fat in your diet. You need to have a good quality fat in your diet. So then what are the cons of fat. Well.

Cardiovascular wrist.

Excess trans fats elevate your LDL and promote arterial plaque.

Remember increasing triglycerides?

Are stored fats and are transported from the liver to the tissue. So triglycerides is a form of energy, but a triglyceride is usually transported from the liver and if it's not used it's stored as fat. So our carbohydrates will convert to a triglyceride and be stored so we do not want high triglycerides.

That is more inflammatory than having a high LDL.

You need to decrease your sugar to decrease your triglycerides to decrease your LDL, it all comes back to your diet.

Get rid of the sugar.

The cons of fat is cardiovascular disease.

Because it elevates the LDL because it elevates the triglycerides because you have that in your, your sugar in your diet and also a colon for fat, it's calorie dense. So there's a lot of calories per gram in fat than there is of carbs.

It's so it's easy to over consume, especially in processed foods. You have processed foods that have empty calories and lots of trans fats.

So it's calorie dense and it's inflammatory when it comes to having processed foods. And then another con for fat is that's oxidation risk. So polyunsaturated fats oxidize.

And we're talking about oxidizing the body.

When it's in your tissue and it's being oxidized and we don't have antioxidants to counteract that, and it's also unstable in heat and in light. So it it doesn't cook as well, polyunsaturated doesn't. However, polyunsaturated I'm thinking about like flaxseed oil oxidizes pretty fast.

You don't want to cook flax seeds because it oxidizes the the oils in there. Same thing with fish oils. Those all need to be stored or fish oils need to be stored in like a cool dark place, so they don't. They're not exposed to heat. And again we'll talk about seed oils at a later date. The take home on this is avocado oils and olive oils are going to be better for you, but maybe not cooking with olive oil at high heat.

And then we have another con for fat.

Is it's hidden, it's hidden in processed foods, often low quality oils contribute to inflammation. Everything that has oil in it, it typically is going to be a low quality oil and it's going to cause inflammation.

So what are the causes of increased fat?

Or fat related disease.

So the cause of you know why are we gaining fat on our body and why is it causing disease? And I kind of hinted at it at it already, although I'm going to say again, excess sugar, excess sugar is stored as fat and it travels through our blood to get to our tissue through triglycerides.

And then our triglycerides are also transported via our LDL cholesterol. So our LDL cholesterol is up there. When we eat poorly and then we have high triglycerides, sugar increased our triglycerides as well and so when you think about that.

Is it the cholesterol that we need to stop eating? It's not. We don't need to stop eating cholesterol. We don't even need to stop eating fat. We need to stop eating sugar, and we need to stop eating.

Processed foods and we need to stop eating poor quality fat. All of those are inflammatory. All of those will increase your LDL cholesterol itself. Eating cholesterol will not increase your LDL as bad as everything else.

So don't be afraid to eat those eggs, because eggs are so good for you. There's so many reasons eggs are good for you. There are so many reasons that processed foods are bad for you.

The benefits of eating an egg far outweigh the risks of it.

Another cause of fat on our body is oxidation. Again, oxidation in the LDL cholesterol that made it into the cell walls.

We need to have the ability to counteract that oxidation, so we need to eat a better diet and the inflammation from that causes chronic disease and it also causes that LDL.

That's in our vessel walls. Also is making it to our tissue and being stored as fat. So we are going to have.

Again, increased fat and fat related.

Adipose related inflammatory related diseases and typically we can counteract some of this. Our body was made to but we're just not putting enough stuff into our body to counteract that. So a lot of fibers and a lot of vitamins and minerals and we get those through fruits and vegetables.

All this causes inflammation when we don't have enough fruits and vegetables to counteract that, it's all going to cause inflammation.

Again, sugar and processed foods and poor quality fats are going to cause inflammation and are going to put weight on our body.

Having cholesterol in general will not.

So I just want you to let that sink in for a second. Eating fat does not make you fat. Eating poorly does.

OK, so now what do you do about it? The key to avoiding you know, I'm talking about fat. So typically I'm talking about cardiovascular disease diseases and heart disease. And when I talk about fat, that's what I'm going to be talking about typically. So to avoid that, the key is to avoid injury to our vessel walls, which means to avoid increased LDL which means to avoid sugar that increases our triglyceride.

Which also means to have a diet that can counteract the damage. So we need to lower our triglycerides. We need to not eat trans fats, stay away from the margarines, stay away from anything that says hydrogenated, stay away from anything processed.

Don't eat sugar. Eat healthy fats like nuts and avocados.

And fish and then exercise. I say it every week. You have to exercise. You have to exercise. We have energy stores on us.

Energy in the form of fat on our body adipose tissue is an energy source and it's just waiting there. It's just waiting there to be used, so we need to exercise. That's what our body was meant to do. Our body was meant to move. So we need to move. We don't have to go pick up a weight, you know, 20 times over our head. We don't have to do that. We just have to move. We have to walk. We have to get a little bit of a glow on our skin to get our heart rate up.

But we just need to find some movement and then we need to eat an anti-inflammatory diet rich in antioxidants.

So you want to choose good fats like avocados, nuts, seeds, fatty fish.

You want to use oils like avocado oil and even coconut oil.

Coconut oil can withstand higher heat and some people are afraid of coconut oil because it's considered saturated. But now, remember, saturated fat is not going to make you fat.

It's the triglycerides in the sugar and the processed foods that are going to make you fat. So don't be afraid of coke and oil. There's so many good things about coconut oil. So use healthy fats. Olive oil for sure. But olive oil? You don't want to cook in a high heat.

So you want to use olive oil like on your salads and maybe a light saute.

And then read the labels, read the labels for anything that says hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated hidden trans fats are in them and really any oil that comes in the form of a can or a box or plastic packaging is not going to be a high quality oil.

So try to stay away from packaged stuff if you can consider metabolic health, activity level gut function when you are thinking about your next meal.

You want to think about your health. You want to think about your activity level.

And I say that your activity level because when I go out and eat, typically when you eat, they will give you if you go to a restaurant they will give you a meal that is way too big to eat. Look that table next to you and they're eating a big meal.

What are the chances that those people are actually going to work that meal off? What are the chances that their activity level is going to be greater or equal to the calories?

In that meal and then think about, are those good calories or bad calories? Are they good oils or bad oils? And are people doing what they need to do to counteract that? And I want that person to be you. I want you to think about that. And is this meal really serving me the way it needs to serve me.

Some closing thoughts on this fats aren't the enemy. They're essential. Fats are essential for our body. Our body makes it. It's not an essential nutrient, but our body makes cholesterol because we need. We need that. We need it for everything. But it's about quality. It's about quantity. So the context matters.

We need to have good quality and good healthy quantity. So if you're navigating chronic health, chronic inflammation or optimizing your brain health, you know, understanding fats is a key to making good decisions.

And I just want to end on this final Scripture actually that I was reading today and it says it's from Galatians 69. It says and let us not grow weary of doing good for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. And when I was reading.

That it just reminded me that, you know, I'm here kind of just preaching to you. I can't hear you. I can't see you, and I can't even really.

Hear what your thoughts are and your struggles, but we we're all in this world struggling to be healthy, struggling, you know, whatever struggles we have.

And it's really important that we just don't give up and we have a community of people around us to help us through hard times and not even just through health. And I'm here to help you through some of your health.

Habits and decisions. But I'm. I'm just a voice and you hear me? You know, 30 minutes a week. But then you're on your own. The rest of the week. So I want you to find a community of people that will live life with you and be a positive role for you because it's hard. It's hard to be out there.

In the world, when we have habits and food and commercials and things bombarding us with with temptations, so that's my final thought for today and I hope you stay healthy, California.

This is a journey, not a quick fix, so be kind to yourself and I'll be there to help you got this.