Some people enjoy the taste of fatty foods. They will eat fatty foods whenever they can. Fat is the food with the most concentrated form of energy. The body uses energy but also stores it. If a person eats a diet which contains a large amount of fat the chances are a large amount of the energy in the fat will not be used up during the day and it will be stored in the body. This unused energy is stored as fat under the skin.

A large proportion of the adult population in the countries of the United Kingdom are overweight due to storing too much fat and an increasing number are severely overweight or obese.

If the body is too heavy the heart has to work extra hard to pump the blood round the body. In time this can lead to heart disease. The best way to avoid becoming overweight in later life is to eat healthily all the time and avoid too many fatty foods.

While some people tend to eat too much fatty food other people eat too little of any food because they are trying too hard to stay slim. This is also unhealthy because the body needs certain amounts of a wide range of substances and deliberately eating too little prevents the body from receiving all the substances it needs. In time, eating too little, can also lead to ill health.

A simple way to think about the amounts of food you can eat is to look at the food pyramid. The food items at the top should only be eaten in small amounts. The foods directly below them can be eaten in larger amounts while the food at the bottom can be eaten in even larger amounts.

You may like to test your meals against this pyramid. If you were having a cheese sandwich and a sugary drink you can see that most of the foods in that meal are in the top part of the pyramid. They are high in energy and some of it could be stored as fat. If you were having some fish with broccoli and potatoes, your meal would have a much lower energy content and would provide a wider range of the other substances your body needs such as protein (in the fish), vitamins and minerals (in the broccoli) and fibre, vitamins and minerals (in the potato). You would still be getting a supply of energy (from the fish and potato) but in a less concentrated form than fat so there is a greater chance of you burning it all up during the day and not storing it as fat.