When fat can be healthy

The New York Times reported today that there are some great ways to cook vegetables to maximize the vitamin content, and that eating them raw was not always as good for you. Here is the full article.

But the most interesting aspect was in an afterthought at the bottom of the article, concerning the problem of getting kids to eat their vegetables:

What accompanies the vegetables can also be important. Studies at Ohio State measured blood levels of subjects who ate servings of salsa and salads. When the salsa or salad was served with fat-rich avocados or full-fat salad dressing, the diners absorbed as much as 4 times more lycopene, 7 times more lutein and 18 times the beta carotene than those who had their vegetables plain or with low-fat dressing.

Fat can also improve the taste of vegetables, meaning that people will eat more of them. This month, The American Journal of Preventive Medicine reported on 1,500 teenagers interviewed in high school and about four years later on their eating habits. In the teenage years, many factors influenced the intake of fruits and vegetables. By the time the study subjects were 20, the sole factor that influenced fruit and vegetable consumption was taste. Young adults were not eating vegetables simply because they didn’t like the taste.

You get more out of your vegetables when they are accompanied by olive oil, a little butter, or avocado — what a wonderful food!! Well of course it does, and what in the world is wrong with that? Nothing.

We simply need to eat those fabulous fats in control. This becomes is a key for our health and that of our kids. A wonderful take-home message of this passage is that food is not the bad guy. Food is not the enemy, any more.