It’s a common misconception that fats (especially saturated ones) are the cause of the sudden rise in heart disease and obesity. Consequently people began eating less saturated fat but the number of cases of heart disease and obesity continued to rise – how can it be then that eating fat causes people to develop heart disease and become obese?

Research has now shown that there is no correlation between saturated fat and heart disease and is instead indicating that sugar is the problem. We should be eating good fats like avocados, nuts, seeds and meat in order to keep our immune system healthy and allow our bodies to form new cells. The fats which should be completely avoided and that are linked to obesity as well as diabetes and immune system dysfunction are trans fats. These are found in foods such as biscuits, cakes, margarine and pastries. These fats are bad as they’ve been altered structurally – unsaturated oils which are meant to be liquid are heated and pumped full of hydrogen which turns them into solid saturated fatty acids. As a result our bodies find it hard to identify the structure and can’t use these fats for any particular function and so this increases blood lipid levels and bad cholesterol.

Sugar makes you fat as our bodies cannot process high levels of it and so it gets stored as excess fat. Women are advised by the American Heart Association not to consume more that 6 teaspoons a day of sugar but it was found that the average American woman actually consumes about 22 teaspoons a day! Just one can of diet coke contains about 8 teaspoons of sugar so imagine how many teaspoons things like cakes and biscuits have in them. Sugary foods also really affect your insulin levels. If you grab a slice of cake when you’re feeling low on energy it will raise your blood-sugar levels dramatically which will give you a quick lift in energy but this will soon be followed by a hard crash, leaving you feeling hungry and grumpy. Instead it’s best to try to go for foods that will release energy slowly such as a piece of fruit eaten along with some protein or fat (this will slow down the speed at which sugar is released into the blood).

So ditch the doughnuts and stop avoiding saturated fats!