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Wed 12 Jul, 2006 04:07 am
Transfats in ready meals etc may give you heart disease and obesity.
That's right, Badboy. Remeber the oreo cookie (was it oreo?) case a couple years ago? Food stores like whole foods and maybe wild oats have been stocking shelves with food that contain no hydrogenated fats for years. Mainstream brands of foods have been reducing numbers of products with HF in them. But, there is still planty of it out there. It's in odd places, not just McDonald's french fries. It's in bread, candy, and cereal.
Im so damned confused, whats a good fat and whats a bad fat? Be as technical as you wish, If I gotta look it up, ill exercise my googlus maximus
Easy way to think about it: generally, good fat is vegetable-based and bad fat is animal-based. But, that doesn't hold true 100%. Hydrogenated fat, which is processed, is baaaaad.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats.html
You'll see int he chart that most butter replacements are trans-fatty. So, people now face the options of using bad natural fat, bad fake fat, or no bad fat on their toast. I go with bad natural fat.
A translation of the chart I linked to.......
DIETARY FATS
Type of Fat
Monounsaturated --- Olives; olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil; cashews, almonds, peanuts, and most other nuts; avocados ---- Liquid at room temperature --- Lowers LDL; raises HDL
Polyunsaturated --- Corn, soybean, safflower, and cottonseed oils; fish --- Liquid at room temp. --- Lowers LDL; raises HDL
Saturated --- Whole milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream; red meat; chocolate; coconuts, coconut milk, and coconut oil --- Solid ---Raises both LDL and HDL
Trans --- Most margarines; vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated vegetable oil; deep-fried chips; many fast foods; most commercial baked goods --- Solid or semi-solid --- Raises LDL; lowers HDL
I go with the bad natural animal fat too, as in butter. I think lard has come up in the fat world consideration recently too.
Or, monosaturates on toast, as in, olive oil with garlic...
my olc market in north north had a product which was half butter and half olive oil, not bad...
Your aim for health is to lower the LDL and raise the HDL.
As a memory peg, remember the first L in LDL stands for lousy. The H in HDL stands for happy. Okay, for technical talk L stands for Low Density, and H for High Density.
Remember too, that pastry with flaky crusts get flaky crusts from transfats.
In anyone really cares about all this, Land 'O Lanes puts out a blend of butter and canola, which is somewhat better than butterfat, and way better than margarine. Same outrageous calories per gram, though.
Oh, and trans fats are usually processed vegetable fat - so double check the label.
When you read that label, also keep an eye out for hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. This is a neat way of making the stuff sound healthy. It isn't
From a good website on food additives:
Quote:Vegetable oil, usually a liquid, can be made into a semi-solid shortening by reacting it with hydrogen. Partial hydrogenation reduces the levels of polyunsaturated oils - and also creates trans fats, which promote heart disease. A committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that on a gram-for-gram basis, trans fat is even more harmful than saturated fat. Ideally, food manufacturers would replace hydrogenated shortening with less-harmful ingredients. The Institute of Medicine has advised consumers to consume as little trans fat as possible, ideally less than about 2 grams a day (that much might come from naturally processed trans fat in beef and dairy products).
Beginning in 2006, Nutrition Facts labels must list the amount of trans fat in a serving of food. That requirement spurred many companies, including Frito-Lay, Kraft, ConAgra, and others, to replace partially hydrogenated oil. Usually the substitutes are healthier and the total of saturated plus trans fat is no higher than it was. Where progress has been limited is restaurants. Most large chains and many smaller independent restaurants continue to fry in partially hydrogenated oil and their French fries, fried chicken, fried fish, and pot pies contain substantial amounts of trans fat. In Denmark, however, the government has virtually banned partially hydrogenated oil. In that country, as well as Australia and Israel, McDonald's fries in trans-free liquid vegetable oil. In 2004, the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA to immediately require restaurants to disclose when they use partially hydrogenated oil and to begin the process of eliminating partially hydrogenated oil from the food supply.
Fully hydrogenated vegetable oil does not have any trans fat, but it also does not have any polyunsaturated oils. It is sometimes mixed (physically or chemically) with liquid oil to create trans-free shortening. When it is chemically combined with liquid oil, the ingredient is called inter-esterified vegetable oil. Meanwhile, oil processors are improving the hydrogenation process so that less trans fat forms.
link
so, its merely the degree of saturation, that could be hard in the cooks world how do we make potato chips stay good and yet be healthy because the cooking process alone will cause saturation. (unless we esterify everything and remove the glycerine-but then wed be cooking in diesel fuel). Maybe We can screw around with the molecules to make the fats loaded with double bonds or buffer the things with cations to create like Alkali earth fats.
Why did all the "fake" fats like the P&G product Olestra fail? not enough interest? or was the "stomach distress" thing a problem for the market?
Olestra had other explosive issues.
It ain't good for the market, but what you should do (or anyone who cares about their health) is to cut back or avoid things like potato chips. I dunno if there is a way to fix them (I'm certainly no chemist).
Yeah. One of the major chip makers had a fat free, or low fat chip on the market for a brief time. Now, that made the potato chip habit easy to break.
I love salty greasy potato chips. No other type will do, for me. I handle this crazed addiction by the old one-day-at-a-time method, "no, I won't get those today". So, I end up buying a bag of, say, Ruffles, once every six months. Ah, but when I do, it's oinker heaven.
TWIXS ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE AN UNHEALTHY AMOUNT OF TRANSFATS.
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