Understanding the Good in Fats: A Balanced Approach to Nutrition

Contrary to popular belief, not all fats are harmful. Healthy fats, such as those found in nuts, and essential nutrients like cholesterol, play crucial roles in maintaining our body’s hormonal balance and overall well-being.  A balanced diet, including multi-source edible oils, is key to optimizing heart health.

Dr. H.K. Chopra, Senior Cardiologist, Moolchand Hospital and Academic Advisor, Saffola Step-Up For Your Heart shares his wisdom on how fat is not all bad. Nutrition plays a critical role in our daily lives yet it is often perceived incorrectly by the masses, highlighting the need for greater awareness. You are what you eat. Without nutrition, we cannot survive. All our happy molecules, or jittery molecules or unhappy molecules are nothing but expressions of nutrients – they are all made up of food. If you have no healthy food, you cannot have these happy molecules like endorphins, oxytocin or serotonin.

Similarly, jittery molecules, toxic molecules which liberate epinephrine and non-epinephrine are made up of toxic food. So choice is ours. If we consume the right food, we will be happy forever.

We derive 15 to 30 per cent of energy from fats, but there is a total misunderstanding – all fatty oils are not bad. For example, nuts such as cashew nuts or walnuts or almonds, all contain healthy fatty oil. In addition, we cannot live without cholesterol. All hormones [even sex hormones] and corticosteroids are all made up of cholesterol. So, cholesterol is necessary for life and it is detrimental too – you have to optimize its levels through a healthy diet. In fact, fatty oils are beneficial and do not increase cholesterol [levels].

An ideal edible oil would involve blending of oil as we get enough antioxidants, vitamins, optimized ratio of omega 3 and omega 6, MUFA (monounsaturated fatty acid), PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acids) and saturated fat. Multi-source edible oil is the best oil which we should consume. Saffola Total-Pro Heart is basically a combination of Rice Bran oil and refined Safflower oil, which has an anti-proliferative effect and reduces LDL (Low-density lipoprotein) or bad cholesterol and CRP (C-reactive protein) level, an inflammatory marker. It helps in the prevention, regression and reversal of coronary artery disease. Further, oil blending is the future because it produces perfect edible oil which should be consumed on a daily basis.

Secondly, it is recommended to exercise daily. Everybody should do heart-friendly exercise for 30 minutes every day, similar to Saffola’s Step-Up For Your Heart campaign, which is the need of the hour. Through its dedicated campaign app, you can simply climb stairs and access the effort tolerance. I think it will go a long way and we will have a lot of data from India.