Cleopatra started the trend of plumpish lady as object of desire, then came Victorian era, where skinny people were scorned and fat ladies were adored and in great demand by society.

The Greek and Roman goddesses were not slim. This large ladies trend survives our civilization up to the sixties.

Nowadays, the fashion pendulum swings to the opposite end. One must be the thinnest possible to fit in most sought after designers' clothes. Fat people are subjected to research and were told that they have both physical and social problem. There is also new politically correct term for them as well, i.e. "obesity".

Somehow, people are awaken and discovered that neither too fat nor too thin is a healthy choice.

We also learned a very valuable idea that healthy body does not equate to quantity of flesh.

Fat people are not also in poor health and at the same taken, very thin people are neither. Nevertheless, majority of people are more weight-conscious. Fat ladies are definitely out and too much fat in our diet are prohibited by most of the experts.

Each cell in our bodies contains fat on the outer shell. As a matter of fact, the tissues that hold cell and without the latter, there is nothing as life that we know of. Fat, therefore, is the most fundamental part of our beings. Strong cells rely on correct amount of fat. Skin cells, liver cells, heart cells, immune system cells need to be functioning strongly and healthy and they all depend on fat. A growing child needs fat as rapidly as it grows in order to catch up with cell division.

Fat is the source of high energy. Fat also help absorbing some important nutrients; such as vitamin A, D, E and K which are soluble in fat. Fatty tissues also act as natural coat to protect us from cold temperatures.

Incredible as it may seem, fat can act as insulator against electric current leakage. Commands from neural system, muscles and brain are sent back and force as electric current, fat tissues prevent those commands from leaking before they are reaching proper receptacles, thus ensure all life instructions are not lost in transit.

Fat tissues also act as cushion for those delicate organs such as liver, kidneys, and heart, protecting them from harmful movements.

Our bodies need fat to build hormones such as steroid which derive from cholesterol; Estrogen, testosterone, and prostaglandins which are important to us are made from fat.

Fat is necessary to human beings because of many advantages. Fat is composed of small units called 'fatty acid'. We know this fatty acid in name of saturated and unsaturated fatty acid.

Every carbon atoms in chemical structure of saturated fatty acid attach to other carbon atom[s] with single bond, so any compounds or elements cannot be added to saturated fatty acid but in case of unsaturated fatty acid, there are some carbon atoms that attach to other carbon atom with double bond which can be broken into 2 single bonds, so some elements or compounds can be added to this kind of fatty acid. Unsaturated fatty acid can be categorized into 2 groups, one is unsaturated fatty acid with only one double bond [between a pair of carbon atoms] called monounsaturated fatty acid, the other is unsaturated fatty acid with many double bonds [between some pairs of carbon atoms] called polyunsaturated fatty acid.

Fat will be useful to our bodies if we eat it in appropriate quantity, in addition, we should choose fat to eat.

We should consume in each day, should not give more than 20% of total calories we need.

Suppose that we need about 2,000 calories of energies per day, total energy from fat should be only 400 calories.

And we should get 200 calories from oil and the other 200 calories from non oily foods.

One teaspoon of oil gives 45 calories of energy. If we need 200 calories of energy from oil, we should eat only about 4-5 teaspoons of oil per day. If we have 3 meals each day, we should have only 1.5 teaspoons of oil in each meal.

We should plan that what we should eat in each meal, for example, if we have lunch with 2 dishes of fried or deep fried foods [which have a lot of fat], for dinner, we should eat low fat foods such as Thai food.

Chinese food usually contains a lot of fat, so we should not eat Chinese food frequently. If you cannot avoid eating Chinese foods, you should have some vegetable salads [which have a lot of fiber] as a hors d's oeuvres because fiber can capture some fat molecules so they will not be absorbed to blood.

We know that eating saturated fatty acid will increase quantity of cholesterol in Blood. The success of the campaign 'stop using pork oil which is saturated fat and encouraged people to use vegetable oil instead' would lead people to reduce cholesterol level in their blood. When most Thai people used vegetable oil, why high cholesterol problem had not been solved but the problem seemed to be more severe.