Vitamins and Fats

Fats and Vitamins need each other.

We all know quite a bit now about good fats and bad fats and how they effect our health, and vitamins need to be brought into the picture because the story doesn't end there.

Zero Trans Fats has become the buzz-phrase of the day — food marketing labels scream it, and governments are mandating the reduction and even elimination of trans fats from foods.

Nutritionists and doctors are on the same page and it is probably, even hopefully, the first 'prescription' they offer for obese people and those suffering weight-related health problems.

Hopefully, they are also following up that prescription with a good dose of information about how to use good fats and vitamins to optimize your health. You may easily understand the vitamins part — we all know vitamins are good for us — but fats and optimal health, you say?

Yes. Fats and cholesterol point the way to heart disease and other serious health conditions, but some fats in the diet are essential to good health.

The Essential Fatty Acids, Omega 3 and Omega 6, are in fact essential to life (in optimal ratios like Udo's 3-6-9 Oil Blend by Flora) — our body needs them for an overwhelming number of health functions. Our bodies cannot make them from scratch, and they cannot be made by our bodies without adding some essential vitamins into the mix.

Fats (lipids) are also a source of energy. Vitamins are not a source of energy, but they play a role in how sources of energy, including fats, carbohydrates and proteins, are used by the body.

To put it simply, certain essential daily vitamins need fat, and essential fats need certain vitamins.

Certain essential daily vitamins are fat-soluble, meaning that fat is necessary to absorb, breakdown, move around and store them.

Why Vitamins Need Fats

As opposed to water-soluble vitamins which are used up and expelled from the body in the urine, fat soluble vitamins basically 'hitch a ride' with fats to get to their job, and then hang out in the liver and fatty tissues during their breaks until they are needed again.

Fat-soluble vitamins include vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E and vitamin K. Vitamin B12 is a water-soluble vitamin, but excess amounts are not excreted in the urine as other excess water-soluble vitamins are.

Because vitamin B12 and the fat soluble vitamins are stored in the liver and fatty tissues, it takes longer to develop a deficiency, and it is even possible to get too much.

Too much fat, of any kind, can cause some of these vitamins to accumulate in the body in unhealthy amounts.

Vitamin A is an especially good example of how fat, or the lack of it, influences essential vitamins:

Too much pure vitamin A can be stored in the body in a high fat diet.
Excess amounts of vitamin A are toxic, and prolonged use of vitamin A in supplements has been associated with birth defects and bone loss. (If taking vitamin A supplements, it's extremely important to get those that provide the vitamin as carotenoids, which are not toxic.)
Cases of vitamin A deficiency in developed countries are rare, because we tend to have high, or adequate amounts of fat to absorb vitamin A.
In developing countries, where diets are extremely low in fat, vitamin A deficiency is a major public health problem, especially in children.
Vitamin A cannot be absorbed by the body without adequate fat.
Not only is this vitamin A deficiency leading to epidemic rates of blindness, but millions of children around the world are suffering anemia, poor growth and increased infections.

Why Fats Need Vitamins

The B Vitamins provide a good example of how some essential fats need vitamins:

The good fats - the essential fatty acids, or Omega 3 and Omega 6 - are essential because our body must have them in a proper blend, but cannot make them on their own.
Furthermore, EFAs do not just arrive in the body as essential fatty acids.
They are taken in first as Linoleic Acid (LA) and Alpha-linolenic Acid (LNA).
Conversion of LA and LNA into EFAs requires Vitamins B3 and B6 and Vitamin C, (along with magnesium and zinc).

Just as eliminating trans fats, quitting smoking and getting exercise are not the whole story to curing heart disease, a short and simplified story about vitamins and fats falls far short as well.

Obviously, we have to look at the whole story of all of the essential nutrients needed for optimal health, including the essential minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, water, oxygen, light and fats and vitamins.