Nutrition experts say that we eat too many bad fats as part of our typical Western diet, so much so that it creates an imbalance in our bodies. This fat imbalance can cause many health problems. You see, fats are the building blocks of our hormones and some of the chemical components that help our bodies function. By eating too many bad fats that our body can’t really use, our blood vessels, organs, and tissues become storage depots for this excess fat. The body can even make its own cholesterol in response to imbalances. Too many hormones can be made causing too many things to happen that maybe they shouldn’t.
The bottom line is that the amount of bad fats you eat will determine how much good fats, like essential fatty acids, you need to eat to overcome the effects of the bad fats in your diet. We typically get plenty of omega-6 fats in our diets with a ratio of 10 to 20 omega-6 units to omega-3 units. For that segment of the population that already consumes essential fatty acids, in the form of extra virgin olive oil, nuts, etc., you should have a much better ratio than you do. The balance should be 4 to 5 units of omega-6 for each unit of omega-3. But our diets are so clogged with other fats that we basically need 1 unit of omega-6 and 2 units of omega-3 to be healthy.
There really isn’t an official Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for essential fats. The amount you need depends on several factors. Men generally require more essential fats than women. Your general stress levels, health status, or illness also affect your needs. Physically active people need more calories and therefore more essential fats. The most sedentary people need about 3 percent of their total calorie intake as essential fats, while the most active people need up to 6 percent.
The first step in determining how many essential fatty acids you need in your diet is to determine what your ideal weight should be and the number of calories you need to maintain it. Then determine your activity level and find the percentage of your diet that should be essential fats. By dividing the percentage of essential fats into your daily caloric intake, you’ll get the number of calories you need to consume from healthy fats.
If you eat a lot of junk food or a lot of animal protein, your diet probably contains a lot of unhealthy fats. Learn to be a box label reader to really see what you’re eating. The challenge is that while you’re young, your body has a tremendous capacity to deal with all sorts of unhealthy things, but as you get older, more accumulates and symptoms and health problems begin to emerge. So a good guess is that there are a lot of unhealthy fats hidden in our diets. Using an essential fatty acid food chart, you can determine what 2 units of omega-3 fats to eat for every 1 unit of omega-6 fats, within the calorie range you have determined for your essential fats.
Once your skin feels velvety smooth to the touch without applying any kind of sticky substance for several weeks, you’ve probably hit the magic number of omega-3s in your diet.
Since there are many sources of omega-6 in our diet, let’s take a look at the good sources of omega-3 fats. Nuts, nut oils, particularly walnuts, sunflower seeds, flaxseeds and their oils, soybeans and soybean oils, cold-water fish and their oils such as herring, cod, tuna , snapper, oily fish, salmon, mackerel, and shrimp are good sources.
Processed flax seed is very unstable and goes rancid very quickly when milled or made into oil, so you need to process or buy it in small enough batches to maintain its nutritional freshness. If you experience heartburn, gas, or diarrhea while taking flax seed products, you may want to switch to another omega-3-rich food. Supplements are also available in liquid or capsule form.
By getting the right fats in the right proportions, you’ll be doing yourself a huge healthy favor, especially for years to come. Healthy fats in the right proportions protect your cells and improve their longevity. Live longer, live healthier, live happier. What more could you want?