07 - Why You Shouldn't Fear Fat

In this episode, we dive into the topic of fats—why they’re essential, which ones to include in your diet, and which ones to avoid.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The role of healthy fats in hormone production, brain function, digestion, and overall health
• Why low-fat diet trends are outdated and what research actually says about fat consumption
• The best sources of healthy fats
• How smoke points affect cooking and which fats are best for different heat levels
• Healthier snack brands that avoid harmful seed oils

Healthy Fat Sources to Include:

• Fatty fish (salmon, sardines, mackerel)
• Nuts & seeds
• Olives & olive oil 
• Avocado & avocado oil
• Coconut & coconut oil
• Butter & ghee
• Egg yolks & beef

Fats to Avoid or Minimize:

• Canola oil, vegetable oil, soybean oil, corn oil, grape seed oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil
• Margarine & hydrogenated oils

Cooking with Fats: Understanding Smoke Points

• Olive oil – Best for sauteing & salad dressings (~300°F)
• Butter & coconut oil – Moderate heat (~350°F)
• Ghee – High heat (~450°F)
• Avocado oil – Very high heat (~500°F)

Resources:

• Screenshot the included lists of healthy fats, the oils to avoid, and smoke point temperatures for easy grocery shopping
• Follow Seed Oil Scout (@seedoilscout) on Instagram for restaurant recommendations that avoid seed oils
• Smoke Point Resource
• Want your nutrition or holistic wellness question answered in a future episode? Send me a DM on Instagram @nourished_living_

Thanks for tuning in! If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend and leave a review—it helps the podcast reach more people looking to improve their health! I appreciate the support!

Connect with Courtney: 

Instagram: @nourished_living_

Work With Me: Nourished Living

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Nourished Living Podcast, where I'll be diving deep into nutrition, holistic wellness, and practical tips to help you live your healthiest, most vibrant life. I am Courtney Podany, a nutritional therapist, certified personal trainer, type one diabetic and mom. And I'm here to help you take charge of your health with ease and confidence. Together we'll explore how to nourish your body, mind, and soul in a way that feels good and sustainable. So grab your favorite beverage. Take a deep breath, and let's get into the episode. I. Welcome back to episode seven of the Nourished Living Podcast. I am your host, Courtney Podany, and I am so excited to be here with you today. So I received some good news last week. It's not related to nutrition or my business. It's personal, but for months and months now, I have been worrying about getting my daughter into school for kindergarten this August, it seemed like every mom I talked to had some type of horror story about wait lists and not getting in where they wanted. So I have just been stressing. I was able to secure my. Boy is preschool spot for next year this past January. So it's just been in the back of my mind, like, where's my daughter gonna go to school in August? It is coming up quickly, but I just found out last week that she was accepted into the school that we wanted her to go to. So that was super exciting and I honestly feel like I have had. 500 pounds of weight lifted off my shoulders. I have been walking around like I am so much lighter now. So that was my good news for the week. I hope you also had some kind of good news, no matter how small it was. Small things are absolutely still worth being celebrated also. So I hope that there was something that brought you joy. And I just have to say that I am so grateful right now that this podcast is just audio because I got super sunburnt yesterday and my forehead and nose are literally the colors of tomatoes. So if there had been a video component to this, I would've had to. Cake on some makeup just to look halfway decent. Hey, there's another good thing in this episode today, I want to talk about fats and clear some stuff up for you. Despite what you've heard, not all fats are harmful, nor should they all be avoided. Yes, around the 1960s and beyond, fats were heavily demonized due to emerging research that linked dietary fat to heart disease, so specifically saturated fat. And because of this led to the rise of low fat diets and a widespread fear of fats in general. However, there has been more recent research that shows that not all fats are harmful. In fact, healthy fats play a crucial role in hormone production brain function, slowing digestion, which we've talked about, how it helps prevent blood sugar spikes increasing satiety. Absorbing fat soluble vitamins like Vitamin A, D, E, and K, and are the structural backbone of every single cell within our body, which at any given moment there are over a trillion cells circulating. So luckily the narrative around fat has shifted, and we now understand that quality and balance matter far more than simply just avoiding fats altogether. So we are going to talk about the best sources of healthy fats, which fats are actually worth limiting, and how smoke points impact cooking. So you can confidently choose the right fats for you each time. The best sources of healthy fats come from fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, tuna, trout, and anchovies, nuts and seeds, olives and olive oil, avocado and avocado oil, coconut and coconut oil, butter and ghee, and then egg yolks and beef. And what a wonderful plus side because these foods are all nutrient dense foods, which as I've shared, is what we should be focusing on eating and including lots of these nutrient dense foods in our diet. And just like we need a variety of different produce, we also need a variety of fat sources. So hopefully you can switch up the fats that you consume on a regular basis. Or if right now out of that list, maybe you're only eating. Salmon, or you only eat nuts or you only eat avocado, you will want to add in a few more options just to truly receive all the wonderful benefits that these healthy fats have to offer. Now I'm going to list off which fats we should limit or minimize. Or to be honest, just avoid altogether and then I will tell you why the fats to avoid are known as industrial seed oils and they consist of canola oil, vegetable oil. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, margarine. And then anytime you read on a nutrition label, if you see hydrogenated oil or partially hydrogenated oil, those count as well. These fats become inflammatory and harmful because of the way that they are processed. And as we know, chronic inflammation is the number one leading cause of all major diseases like heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, and dementia, and type two diabetes. So for me personally, by choosing to minimize these oils as best as I can, I am taking a proactive step toward disease prevention in the future and investing in my long-term health. Those fats are also light sensitive and heat sensitive, which is why we are touching on smoke point later. If you think about canola oil or vegetable oil. It comes in a clear plastic bottle at the grocery store. This clear plastic is not protecting the oil from the light, and when it just sits in the light all day, every day until it's purchased, it can actually become a rancid before you even get it home with you. Okay. Also, plastic bottles have their own set of issues and increase the potential of problematic toxins getting into the oil. Now, if you think about olive oil or avocado oil, you'll notice these are stored in green glass bottles to protect and preserve the oil. And with glass bottles, there are no harmful substances entering into the product, like with the plastic bottles. This is also why it's important to look at the labels before we buy foods, because a lot of times the oils that are used in processed foods are canola oil, vegetable oil, soybean oil, et cetera. Luckily, processed foods always have labels with the ingredients, so if you see a label, you should probably just check it. And I Googled quickly and good old Google claims that. 60% of the average American's calorie intake comes from these ultra processed foods. So that might not be you, but this is why I always share about checking labels so you actually know what is going into your body. And then I also provide cleaner options, so you have other alternatives to choose from. These brands I am going to share are so you can still get your chip fill or your cookie fill or whatever you like to snack on. So these brands do not use seed oils in their products. For crackers, there's Hu Kitchen. So HU Kitchen, Mary's Gone, crackers and some of the simple mills flavors like the honey cinnamon. For chips, I like the Boulder chips and siete chips. And I typically just look for the phrase made with avocado oil, which is typically listed on the front of the bag. So if it says that, then those are good as well. For cookies, there's simple mills, cookies, or siete. And. Technically, I don't know if this would be considered a cookie, but I just have to share because I have literally been obsessed with these for the last two months. But heavenly hunks. Are seriously heavenly. It's like an oatmeal bite, I guess you could say. And they have a dark chocolate chip flavor, which is so amazing. And they do have other flavors as well. You can find them at like Costco or Raley's, but it's nice because it instantly curbs my chocolate craving and it's all good, clean ingredients. So if you have a sweet tooth, I would definitely recommend. Heavenly hunks for popcorn. I like the brand Lesser Evil, so it's like an already popped bag of popcorn, not microwave popcorn. And then for bars, I like Perfect bars, which you will find those in the refrigerated section. Or there are RX bars or Lara bars, which do not use seed oils, I've honestly found seed oils in so many things, including chicken broth, roasted nuts and seeds, pasta, sauce, condiments, salad dressings, coffee creamers. Ice cream sweet treats. So again, just check those ingredients. I know it might take some extra time for you initially, but once you find the brands and products that you like, you can go back into autopilot mode when you're at the grocery store and it'll get quick again, I promise. So what is smoke point and why is it important? Smoke point is the temperature at which an oil will begin to burn and smoke. When we are cooking foods, we do not want them to be smoking Steam, yes is okay, but not smoke. And this smoke point varies with each oil. The smoke point for olive oil is only about 300 degrees, which most recipes usually have the oven set higher, so olive oil is best for sauteing vegetables on the stove top, or for colder meals like making a salad dressing. I don't buy salad dressing from stores anymore. I just use olive oil mixed with balsamic vinegar. The smoke point for both butter and coconut oil is 350 degrees, so this can be put into a low temperature oven or used on the stove. Top ghee has a higher smoke point of 450 degrees, so this can be used in a recipes and put into the oven. You could put some ghee on top of your vegetables to roast, for example. And avocado oil has a very high smoke point of 500 degrees, so this should withstand all of your oven cooking. I usually use this for anything that has to be cooked in the oven, and then use olive oil for my salad dressings and sauteing just to make sure that I am incorporating variety. And I included the oils and their smoke point temperatures in the show notes so you can take a screenshot to have with you to decide which fat will be best for whatever type of cooking you enjoy. I also linked the website where I got the smoke point temperatures. So we absolutely need fats for our bodies and brains. To function properly and to function well, we receive brain power, long-term energy fullness, structural support, and hormone production from fats. Any low fat or non-fat claims on packaging are mostly marketing tactics rooted in the outdated low fat diet trends of the past. Today, research shows that fats are essential for our health. We just need to focus on the right sources, the quality of the fats we are consuming. And I would just like to share that I do not avoid seed oils 100% of the time. When I am purchasing things for my home, I definitely try to find brands that do not utilize these seed oils, but sometimes I do have requests for products that include them and I don't. Always have control of the food that I am presented, when I'm out at events or whatnot. But to me, it seems like choosing, not to eat when I'm at an event because I don't know what's in the food and not eating when I'm hungry. Because of the potential of there being some seed oils that is more stressful than just eating a small amount, trust me, the stress and worry are just not worth it. So even though I am a nutritionist and really try to take good care of myself, so I can feel my best on a regular basis, I am not perfect all the time. Just when things are actually in my control, I choose not to eat them. But if you would really like to even take this a step further, there is a company called Seed Oil Scout. They have an Instagram page if you would like to follow them there, but they find restaurants that choose not to use seed oils and they'll let you know which ones those are. And then they also let you know which ones do cook with seed oils so you can make, you know your own decisions based off of that. So I've included in the show notes the list of the healthier fat sources, as well as the seed oils that have the potential to cause inflammation. So you can take a screenshot and have that with you when you grocery shop. Also side note, I am putting together a q and a episode to answer your questions. I've received a lot of questions over the years, a lot of them being similar, so I wanted to address those in case anyone else is wondering the same thing. So if you have a burning nutrition or holistic wellness question, I would love to answer it for you. So just shoot me a DM on Instagram. I am@nourished_living_ and even if you happen to be listening to this episode after the q and a episode has already aired, you are not too late. I'm sure there will be a part two, part three, part four, so go ahead and just send it over and I will circle back to it. All righty, folks, thank you so much for hanging out with me today and I hope this was helpful and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for hanging out with me today and tuning into the Nourished Living Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found something you can start implementing right away to kickstart your nourished transformation. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who could benefit from these insights. You can also connect with me over on Instagram@nourished_living_ for more resources and support. Until next time, stay nourished.