Fat is a four letter word in our popular culture and used in the fashion industry for any girl who is not size zero. Fat is an adjective (I am a fat person), a noun (I have lots of fat in my body), and a verb (I am fattening by the day). Chemically fat is a long carbon molecule with hydrogen molecules attached, which is lighter than muscle and does not dissolve in water. In medical and biological terms the basic building blocks of fat are omega oils, also known as essential fatty acids. These omega oils are essential requirements for many body functions, but most young people are not as aware of them, as they are of proteins and carbohydrates, because the same word "fat" is used everywhere.
Carbohydrates turn to energy and protein into muscle, but fat is stored as fat. And because the word fat has such a negative meaning in popular culture, there is no use talking of good fat (unsaturated) or subcutaneous fat (under the skin) as opposed to bad fat (saturated) and visceral fat (excess fat stored in the body). We should stop referring to the essential omega oils in our diet as "fat", because they are beneficial for our body in these ways:
Omega oils are very essential for women because of reproduction, and the ideal percentage of fatty acids in a woman's body is between 19-26 per cent of body weight. We don't need more of these oils, because when unused they are stored in the body and cause obesity and the related health problems. "We need about 1 percent of our diet to come from fat. However, we eat 20, 30, 40 times that amount," says Dr. James Shoemaker of St. Louis University School of Medicine, who has a doctorate degree in nutrition.
The human body is today largely protected from the severe cold of winter, and modern human beings cover up and take care of their skins from the vagaries of weather, and we are less outdoorsy and active than ever. So while we need less oils in our diet, the traditional food habits and recipes, which came up in very different times, contain excess amounts of these oils. We don't, for example, need to eat meat as much as our ancestors did. And meat is bad for us because it has so much solid saturated fat and takes so long to digest. The liver manufactures the only cholesterol you need, which is HDL or good cholesterol, but if you keep eating excess amounts of meat, egg, or cheese, all that is converted into LDL or bad cholesterol.
The healthiest source of essential omega oils (Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids) are grains and vegetables, like sunflower oil, flax seed oil, walnut oil, safflower oil, and olive oil. Other good sources of Omega 3 are seafood like mackerel, herring, salmon, tuna, and shellfish. Many people who want to eat healthy, and follow a mostly vegetarian or vegan diet, try and eat some fish to get these essential omega oils like Olivia Wilde. Other sources of fat
Even for those who follow a meat-free diet, fat is a bad word, but in their bodies it does not come from the minute amounts of omega oils in their grains and vegetables....but from eating too many carbohydrates! Like breakfast cereals, chips, desserts, sauces, ice creams, etc. Any excess carbs not used by the body are converted into fat. This is another reason why the good omega oils in the diet should not be confused with the fat in the human body, which comes from many sources.
The fashion world goes to the extremes of calling a model, with just a hint of curves, fat like Behati Prinsloo (above) was. Recently the 5'10" tall Ralph Lauren model, Filippa Hamilton, who weighs 120 pounds and wears size 4 says she was fired by Ralph Lauren for being "fat". Popular media finds a hint of cellulite on a girl and screams FAT, as happened with Karolina Kurkova and Mischa Barton. If we want girls to eat well and stay healthy we should never use the word "fat" for the essential omega oils in our diet.
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