Healthe fats needed

[abemom2]

We don't have enough fat in our diet, and would like a list of the fats around.

Avocado, butter, Coconut oil... What else is there?

(My kids are very picky and don't touch avocado, we don't have much dairy at home so limited in the butter.)

I give my kids a spoon of C.O. after a protein supper with the Omega and Vit. D, since Vit. D needs fat to absorb it properly. It does not taste great, and I can't get myself to take it this way. It's probably not enough fat for how much is needed daily, so I need some ideas as to how to get it into more foods. Into fish, meat meals not dairy.

Thanks, Ana

[WeasleyMum]

If you're interested in healthy fats, I would highly reccommend the book Real Rood: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck. It really opened my eyes to some fats I never would have considered before, like lard!

Anyway, for oils I use olive oil, butter, coconut oil, and lard (I buy leaf lard from a vendor at the farmers' market, and render it at home). I take a fish-oil capsule-- like you, just can't handle a straight spoonful. I include nuts in our diet as much as I can, given what they cost. It probably doesn't come out to much. We eat plenty of free-ranged eggs, especially since getting our own chickens. I try to buy high-quality meats-- grass-fed beef, pastured pork, pastured chickens, wild salmon-- that have the good fat built-in, so to speak. I often use the fat from those meats to cook other things. For example, if I roast a chicken I'll save the drippings and wait 'till they separate, make a gravy from the juice part, and use the fat to fry potatoes; fry eggs in the bacon fat, etc. I make chicken stock from bones, cheap necks/backs, and veggies, don't skim much of the fat off, and use it when I make bean or legume dishes like lentil soup, unless veg*ns are coming to dinner. It's the kind of things you do without hardly thinking about, when you cook. I make granola using half butter/ half coconut oil, but you could just as easily go all-coconut. I plan to make a batch like that next week for a vegan houseguest.

I don't know how much fat is required in a daily diet, but I doubt that it's hard to get, especially if you eat meat, eggs and dairy. Most protein comes already packaged with fat, so to speak. In eggs, the fat is in the yolk, the protein is in the white, so as long as you eat the whole thing, you get both. Same thing with milk: plenty of protein in a glass, but ~4% of it is fat. Same thing with meat and fish: even "lean" ground beef is 8-12% fat. Of course the quality of both fat and protein depends on what you are buying. Don't ask me about my grocery bill. Basically, if your diet includes enough protein from real sources (i.e. not protein powders and etc), it probably includes enough fat, too.

[kjbrown92]

Nuts is one way to get it
We make smoothies (coconut milk, bananas, frozen berries, oj; you can also put spinach in it and/or almond butter)
Fatty fish like salmon
olive oil (baked sweet potatoes, sauteed veggies)
use the drippings from a roast chicken to make gravy

[Magelet]

for fats we eat
olive oil
coconut oil
beef fat
chicken fat
butter
fatty meat (often grassfed)
pastured eggs
whole milk
cream
peanut butter
sesame seed oil
avocados in season
other things I'm sure

essentially all of these in our house are because they taste good, and just happen to have healthy fats (we like to eat a lot of fat, so getting these good fats in our diet is easy and delicious, except on the pocket)