Are you consuming enough of this healthy fat?

Studies show that upping your olive oil intake can decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia-related death. Small diet changes, such as incorporating olive oil, can make a huge impact on your overall health.

“Olive oil and other liquid vegetable oils (corn, canola, soybean, safflower) contain unsaturated fats that help lower bad cholesterol, triglycerides and provide essential fats that the body needs but cannot produce itself,” says Megan Labine, a registered dietitian at Aurora Health Care. “The solid fats and oils, like butter, coconut oil, stick margarine or solid shortening, are high in saturated fats which will increase your risk for cardiovascular disease and raise bad cholesterol.”

One easy swap is switching out these common solid fats with vegetable oils.

“When used in place of saturated fats like butter, olive oil can help decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease since it contains unsaturated fats,” says Labine. “It can also lower bad cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood.”

Choosing healthy fats most often will have the biggest impact on preventing diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease.

How much olive oil should you be consuming?

“Fats contain the highest number of calories of the 3 macronutrients, 9 calories per gram. It is important to plan meals with appropriate portions. An appropriate portion of olive oil to use in cooking or food prep would be 1 Tbsp,” says Labine.

Fun ways to incorporate olive oil into your diet include:

• Using it in a salad dressing
• Adding it into a soup
• Cooking with it on the stove
• Drizzling it on rolls instead of butter

Labine also emphasizes that there are many other ways to incorporate healthy fats into your diet. For example, avocados, nuts, seeds, salmon and tuna all have great health benefits.

Want to learn more about your risk for heart disease? Take a free online quiz.