Olive Oil: Diet and Health Benefits
One of the most common diet mistakes some people make is passing on full-fat vinaigrette in favor of fat-free salad dressing.
Fat helps your body absorb the nutrients from lettuce and other vegetables and also improves satiety (which means having a salad for lunch could keep you full until dinner).
But you’ll do your body the biggest favor if you opt for a dressing made with olive oil. Yes, it’s high in calories and fat (120 calories and 14 grams of fat per tablespoon), but studies found it protects against heart disease.
And no one is saying you should pour with abandon. Drizzling – on salads, steamed vegetables, pasta, and even meats – is the appropriate method.
Opt for extra virgin This is the best-quality and most flavorful type of olive oil. It contains more polyphenols – antioxidants that help protect against heart disease and cancer – than other kinds of olive oil and other oils high in heart-healthy monounsaturated fat, such as canola oil.
A recent report in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that people whose diet included one to two tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil a day showed a 1.74 mg/dl increase in their good (HDL) cholesterol levels. Other studies show that every one-point rise in HDL reduces heart-disease risk by 2 to 3 percent. [via]
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