The Dangers of Saturated fat

Saturated fat isn’t just bad for the heart — it can increase the risk of diabetes, too. To limit your intake, avoid red meat and full-fat. Chew the right fat (in moderation, of course). We all know that saturated fat — found primarily in meat and dairy products — can send our cholesterol soaring like a hot air balloon. But that’s not the only trouble it causes.
A diet high in saturated fat is also a key contributor to type 2 diabetes. Here’s why: Saturated fat riles up the immune system, telling it to produce an inflammatory protein called interleukin-1beta. That protein then wreaks mischief of its own, telling our organs to give insulin the cold shoulder. Insulin is the hormone that removes sugar from the bloodstream and stores it as energy in our muscle and fat cells. When the body is insulin-resistant, those cells have a harder time taking in the sugar, or glucose. The body produces more insulin in response until finally the muscle and fat cells open their doors and take in the sugar.
Diabetes occurs when the body can’t produce enough insulin to convince the cells to absorb the glucose. This results in a high level of sugar in the bloodstream that the body doesn’t know how to use. Kind of takes all the fun out of eating bacon, doesn’t it?
Help reduce your chances of diabetes — and cardiovascular disease — by limiting your saturated fat to less than seven percent of your calories and by eating 100 percent whole wheat or whole grain foods in place of processed foods. Calculate how many grams that is by taking your daily calorie consumption and multiplying it by 0.07. Divide that number by 9 (the number of calories per gram of fat). As a rough guide, someone on a 2,000-calorie diet should eat no more than 15 grams of saturated fat a day.