Fats: why they are needed and how to take them without exaggerating

We could have receptors on the tongue and palate specialized precisely in the perception of lipid consistency, which some scholars, in the journal Chemical Sensesthey proposed to call oleogusto, from the Latin oleumin homage to olive oil.

“Guide for hungry brains” by Carol Coricelli and Sofia Erica Rossi (Il Saggiatore).

“The detection mechanisms are still poorly understood and deserve more in-depth research,” reads Guide for hungry brainsjust published by the Assayer and signed by Carol Corricelli, neuroscientist at the Western University of London in Canada, and the expert in communication science Sofia Erica Rossi.

But the authors can only admit the importance of fat in the culture of food: “Each kitchen adopts a chosen fat that goes well with the other dishes on the table: this is why we do not use olive oil when we cook Vietnamese or smoked bacon when we cook Indian ».

You can’t do without fats

The word “fat” seems to clash with the noun “health” and even more with the verb “lose weight” and just naming them evokes cardiovascular problems and overweight.

Instead it is not so: lipids are essential for our survival. To begin with, some vitamins are fat-soluble, that is, they can only be assimilated if they are accompanied by fats.

Not only: the cell walls, which regulate the entry and exit of all substances, are formed by the so-called lipid bilayer.

A deficiency always involves some ailments: attention and memory difficulties, drops in the immune system, constipation.

Our brains know we need fats and it repays us with small bursts of pleasure when a food containing them rolls between our teeth.

Food gratification is defined as “food reward”, because it is linked to our brain reward system. If the slimming regimes are unattractive, not very “rewarding”, they are doomed to failure. In short, it is better to dress the salad even if you are on a diet.

The brain likes it greasy

To understand why greasy and sweet foods are incredibly good, we need to take a leap into our evolutionary past.

The ancestors loved them as we did, because the adaptation strategies led us to search the environment for foods that could provide us with caloric intake. (1 gram of fat provides 9 kilocalories), to have energy to spend or store.

And without energy, the body is like a car without petrol. Stored in the form of triglycerides in adipose tissuefatty acids are transformed as needed into glucose, our fuel.

The arrival on the palate of a sugary or oily food, like all beneficial actions for survival, triggers showers of dopamine, that neurotransmitter that produces a sensation of pleasure such as to want to replicate the gesture. The reward circuit, a kind of little drug.

«The study and discovery of the biological mechanisms of our behaviors have produced economic, social and dietary consequences» reads in Guide for hungry brains.

“While we consumers remain biologically identical, agri-food companies have been able to exploit scientific knowledge to create increasingly tempting foodswho entered the circuit of pleasure and reward ».

“The era of dopamine” by Anna Lembke (Roi editions)

If you become a dopamine slave

Once upon a time, alluring ingredients were offered by nature, with the glucose and fructose of apples or the fats of pistachios. But today the food industry churns out products with a quantity of sugars and fats like never before the Sapiens had seen in their two hundred thousand years of stay on Earth.

They cost relatively little and at the same time are extremely desirable, teasing our ancestral tendency to accumulate energy, to the point where people become addicted to it.

“We have evolved in an attempt to get closer to pleasure and away from pain,” as she explained to Reading of the Corriere della Sera Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, Californiaand author of the recent essay The era of dopamine (Roi editions).

“This primitive circuit is suitable for a world of scarcity and not superabundance, such as the one in which we live and which we have transformed to the point of making substances and behaviors capable of procuring well-being available at the touch of a finger”.

We end up inundated with dopamine, slaves to the obsessive pursuit of pleasure. “We are like cacti that, born to live in an arid climate, find themselves in a water-soaked environment,” says Lembke.

Saturated and unsaturated fatty acids

The problem of industrialized countries is a diet with too many packaged cured meats, snacks or brioches.

The fats of these products, saturated and worse still trans, in excessive quantities favor the increase of the levels of cholesterol and of triglycerides in the blood, as well as the increase in inflammatory state of the organism. The unsaturated fats of extra virgin olive oil or fish instead do the exact opposite.

There are indeed fats and fats. There Mediterranean diet provides a lipid share of around 25-30 percent of the total energy requirement, to be added to a carbohydrate share, i.e. carbohydrates, of approximately 50-55 percent of the total energy requirement, and a protein share, the lowest of the three , by 15-18 percent.

The Mare nostrum model is considered among the best in the world also for the magnificence of its fats, starting with extra virgin olive oil..

For distinguish between good and badit is useful to consider the chemical structures of fatty acids.

The saturated ones they have a linear and rigid conformation that allows them to compact and to be solid at room temperature: they are present in greater quantities in foods of animal origin, such as butter, lard, cream, cheeses, fatty meats, sausages and preserved meatsand in some vegetable condiments widely used in industrial products, such as palm and coconut oil.

Unsaturated fatty acids they have a structure that can be defined as broken, such as to make them liquid at room temperature: they are contained, as well as in the fatty fish (such as salmon, fresh tuna, blue fish and trout), especially in nuts, extra virgin, seed oils cold pressed and oil seeds,

In turn unsaturated are divided into monounsaturated and polyunsaturated, to which omega 3 belongrightly praised in the scientific literature, and distributed in the Mediterranean table from mackerel to walnuts.

According to the Larns (Reference levels of nutrient and energy intake for the Italian population), saturated fats should be contained within a ceiling of 10 percent of the daily caloric requirement and the remaining 15-20 percent should be monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.

In summary, we must focus on a diet with more natural ingredients and fewer industrial productswith a strong plant base, starting with the condiments included, and with a couple of weekly portions of fish for those who are not vegetarians.

Avocado hummus

Watch out for avocado calories

Fats in the right quantities do not make you fat, quite the contrary. Nibbling a little bit of nuts fills and works as a hunger breaker.

For example, it turned out that consuming a few almonds between breakfast and lunch helps to control the craving for food and to reduce the calorie intake of subsequent meals (on European Journal of Clinical Nutrition).

However, we must not overdo it, neither with oil, nor with hazelnuts, nor with avocado. The fruit is in fashion for its flavor, texture, and the potential benefits of its unsaturated fats.

But it’s not so dietary to compulsively incorporate pulp into salads, toasts and dishes inspired by Japanese and Hawaiian cuisine, from sushi fusion to poké.

It is true that avocado fats are a completely different matter compared to those of a stick of butter, but it is still 23 grams per hectogram. And the energy content is pretty high: an average fruit brings about 240 kilocalories.

Eliana Liotta (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).

Avocado also has a significant water impact. To produce one you need about 70 liters of water, that is more than three times what is needed to obtain an orange and 14 times as much as it takes for a tomato.

THEn average stat virtus, as the Aristotelian sentence of memory states. No exaggeration.

Eliana Liotta is a journalist, writer and science writer. On iodonna.it and on the main platforms (Spreaker, Spotify, Apple Podcast and Google Podcast) you will find his podcast series The good that I want.

All the articles by Eliana Liotta.

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