Fat is not good for your body at all and should never be suggested to be a good thing in life. Unfortunately, lots of our cheap foods and bad eating habits leads to being unhealthily overweight. I see so many fat kids these days it's sad and not a good sign for society's future.
I was in agreement, until this part.
Dietary fat, as in fatty acids, is not inherently bad. In fact, other than trans fat, all other fatty acids are generally good, especially in moderation. Excessive carb intake leads the body to sequester fat for later, because carbs are less resource intensive to extract energy from, and fatty acids are calorie dense.
And the body needs a fair amount of fatty acid intake just to meet basic life needs - can't grow cells without lipids.
Now you should minimize straight saturated fats, unless it's a soul source of energy - they offer a ton of energy and if burned for energy they cannot lead to harm. Otherwise your diet should be comprised of unsaturated fatty acids, be they mono- or polyunsaturated. The Omega fatty acids fall into this category, as do a host of other important fats. In fact there are a number of them which are labeled Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs) -- these are those the body cannot produce on its own, but from these the body can then create a host of others. That being said, it's often terribly inefficient at the conversion - you'd never get all the Omega 3s you'd need from Flax alone, because the body is very bad at converting ALA into the versions found primarily in seafood, EPA and DHA.
There is also good fat [storage] in the body - everybody has it, in fact you absolutely must have it or else you'd be dead. The adipose tissue that accumulates under the skin is generally positive - you can have a little padding equally spread across the body and be in peak health. There's also the intramuscular fat, which IIRC is largely neutral. If you have central obesity, where adipose tissue collects as visceral fat in the abdomen, that is a kind of fat that is very bad for you, and does nothing but wreck havoc. Subcutaneous fat is now recognized as a major contributor to the endocrine system as it manufactures and releases various hormones, as well as assorted immune and other functions.
If you can generally see someone as "big boned" who has a fair amount of padding, but see they don't really have belly fat, that person is probably healthy.
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