Balance Your Good Fats

Are you getting too much of one kind of healthy fat and not enough of other healthy fats? Strike the right balance for better health.

Healthy fats include monounsaturated fats -- such as olive oil -- and polyunsaturated fats -- such as corn oil and sunflower oil. A balanced mix of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats appeared best for helping control cholesterol in a recent study.

No more than 30 percent of your daily caloric intake should come from fat -- for some people, physicians may recommend even less. Of this 30 percent, no more than 7 percent to 10 percent should come from saturated fat. The rest should be a mix of unsaturated fats -- both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. In a recent study, researchers compared the cholesterol-lowering effects of three diets, two with 30 percent of calories from fat and one more like the average American diet, which typically has more than 30 percent of calories from fat.

Of the diets that limited fat intake to 30 percent of calories, one had all fat calories come from olive oil, which is high in monounsaturated fats and relatively low in polyunsaturated fats, while the other diet's fats came from special sunflower oil formulated to contain high amounts of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. Although both test diets provided fewer fat calories than the typical American diet, only the diet that balanced mono- and polyunsaturated fats lowered both total and LDL cholesterol.