Fat are an essential part of our diet and is important for good health. There are different types of fats, with some fats being healthier than others. To help make sure you stay healthy, it is important to eat unsaturated fats in small amounts as part of a balanced diet.

healthy fats

unhealthy fats 

Saturated fat causes high blood cholesterol, one of the risk factors for heart disease. Common food sources of saturated fat include butter, cream sauces, poultry, chocolate, coconut, beef, hot dogs, sausage, ice cream and whole milk. Other sources include lamb, pork, lard, coconut oil, palm oil and cocoa butter. You should consume no more than 15 grams of saturated fat per day, according to the American Diabetes Association. However, women and sedentary men may require less than the recommended amount.

Your body makes most of the cholesterol it needs. However, some of the cholesterol comes from the food you eat. High-cholesterol foods such as high-fat meat, egg yolks and high-fat dairy products may shoot up your blood cholesterol levels. Limit your cholesterol intake to less than 200 milligrams per day, advises the American Diabetes Association. High cholesterol levels can lead to angina, heart attack, higher coronary heart disease risk and atherosclerosis.

Avoiding foods that contain trans fat is good for your heart, as this fat tends to increase blood cholesterol levels, according to the American Diabetes Association. Common food sources of trans fat include processed foods like chips and crackers, French fries and baked foods with hydrogenated oil. Trans fat is produced when liquid oil is converted into solid fat by the hydrogenation process. The American Heart Association recommends keeping trans fat intake to less than 1 percent of total calorie.
trans fat-
Trans fat, or trans-unsaturated fatty acids, trans fatty acids, are a type of unsaturated fat that occur in small amounts in nature, but became widely produced industrially from vegetable fats for use in margarine, snack food, packaged baked goods, and frying fast food starting in the 1950s. Trans fat has been shown to consistently be associated, in an intake-dependent way, with increased risk of coronary artery disease, a leading cause of death in Western nations.

saturated fats-
A saturated fat is a type of fat in which the fatty acid chains have all or predominantly single bonds . A fat is made of two kinds of smaller molecules: glycerol and fatty acids. Fats are made of long chains of carbon atoms. Some carbon atoms are linked by single bonds and others are linked by double bonds Double bonds can react with hydrogen to form single bonds. They are called saturated, because the second bond is broken up and each half of the bond is attached to (saturated with) a hydrogen atom. Most animal fats are saturated. The fats of plants and fish are generally unsaturated. saturated fats tend to have higher melting points than their corresponding unsaturated fats, leading to the popular understanding that saturated fats tend to be solids at room temperatures, while unsaturated fats tend to be liquid at room temperature with varying degrees of viscosity (meaning both saturated and unsaturated fats are found to be liquid at body temperature).