The Skinny on Fat: How to Get Lay-ed the Right Way

Growing up in the town from which hail the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Starship, fatty foods have always been portrayed as the bogeyman. My parents were amazed that, on the special occasions when they would send me to school with a Twinkie as a treat in my lunch, I was ostracized by the other children as though I were carrying plutonium. When I hit my teens, I rebelled; throughout my college years, I subsisted on bacon cheeseburgers, chili cheese hot dogs, Taco Bell, and Pop Tarts. Now that I'm considerably older, and only mildly more mature, though, I've come to understand the need for balance. While my hippie friends' terror at the sight of a Snickers bar wasn't entirely warranted, neither was my contrarian desire to mainline sausage fat. And so I began to research the actual facts of the matter, the actual pros and cons of fatty foods, and why they were pros or cons.

Any discussion of fats is going to be filled with references to cholesterol. But, what exactly is it? What makes is "good" or "bad"? According to the Harvard School of Public Health:

Cholesterol is a wax-like substance. The liver makes it and links it to carrier proteins called lipoproteins that let it dissolve in blood and be transported to all parts of the body. As we all know by now, too much cholesterol in the blood can lead to problems, such as heart disease.

Cholesterol-carrying lipoproteins play central roles in the development of clogged arteries and cardiovascular disease. The two main types of lipoproteins basically work in opposite directions. Low-density lipoproteins (LDL) carry cholesterol from the liver to the rest of the body. When there is too much LDL cholesterol in the blood, it can be deposited on the walls of the coronary arteries. Because of this, LDL cholesterol is often referred to as the "bad" cholesterol. High-density lipoproteins (HDL) carry cholesterol from the blood back to the liver, which processes the cholesterol for elimination from the body. HDL makes it less likely that excess cholesterol in the blood will be deposited in the coronary arteries, which is why HDL cholesterol is often referred to as the "good" cholesterol.