High blood-cholesterol levels are dangerous because of their correlation with atherosclerosis and consequent heart attacks and strokes. Is it possible to eliminate all cholesterol from the bloodstream by having a diet that includes no cholesterol? Is it desirable to have no cholesterol at all in your body? Explain your answer.

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All right. Hello everyone. So this question says that in a nutrition class, the students debate about the possibility of completely eliminating fats from a person's diet to improve the health of the heart. Is it feasible to have a diet with no fats at all? Would such a diet be beneficial for heart health? Explain your answer. All right. So before we start talking about the health implications of what's being discussed here. Let's just recall the fact that any diet completely eliminating a macromolecule is inherently dangerous. The macro molecules are referred to as such because they're important in maintaining our health in several different ways. So let's talk about fats specifically. Well, recall that fats can serve many different functions within the body. The primary reason or at least the first reason that tends to come to mind is energy storage, right? Fat serves as energy storage for whenever the cell requires it. But in addition, fats are part of the cell membrane structure. That's because the cell membrane is made up of a lipid bilayer and also the importance of fatty tissue in our bodies has to do also with the absorption of certain vitamins because some vitamins are not soluble in water, rather they're hydrophobic and fat soluble. So, having fat stores in our bodies allows for these vitamins to actually be absorbed for our use. And so going back to that absorption of vitamins, having no fat at all in the body would affect your health because we would end up becoming deficient in those fat soluble vitamins. Now, of course, consuming too much fat is a bad thing in the sense that too much of anything tends to be harmful to us. But specifically, right, recall that too many saturated as well as trans fats is implicated in the development of heart disease. That's true. However, certain fats are actually necessary for heart health. For example, unsaturated fats are implicated in maintaining heart health. And so a deficiency in fats, including unsaturated fats would actually affect your heart health negatively. And so from there, we arrived at our final answer. So essentially the most important part here is that a balanced diet that incorporates all of the major food groups and the major macro molecules is best to ensure overall health. So the answer is no, it is not feasible to eliminate all fats from the diet. And doing so would be detrimental to health because fats are essential nutrients that our body needs. And so with that being said, thank you so very much for watching. And I hope you found this helpful

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Key Concepts

Cholesterol Function

Dietary Cholesterol vs. Blood Cholesterol

Atherosclerosis and Cardiovascular Health