Trans fats
Anyone that is familiar with trans fats knows they aren’t good. Any one that isn’t familiar has an idea that they probably aren’t good. Let me tell you about trans fats and what to look for on food labels.
Here’s the scoop:
- Trans fats are hydrogenated oils.
- Trans fats are essentially synthetic cholesterol.
- Cholesterol is measured in mg on food labels.
- Trans fats are measured in grams.
So wait a minute… if trans fats are like synthetic cholesterol and food labels report cholesterol in mg, why aren’t trans fats reported in mg?
The good ‘ol FDA. Thanks FDA! We pay you for safety but thanks for throwing us under a bus! Well the truth is we throw ourselves under a bus and sheepishly rely upon them to guide us, when we are fully capable of finding out on our own. This information is not new, trans fats have been around for decades, but only recently were added to food labels.
Since this is the case, that the FDA is not to be relied upon, we have to do this ourselves. If a label says “partially hydrogenated oil”, then it has trans fats. The real doozy is still to come: since the FDA only currently requires trans fats to be reported in grams, if it has less than .5 grams it doesn’t even have to be reported!!! The silly thing is that if we saw a product with 500mg of cholesterol we would run quickly from it! Some products have anywhere from .5 to 3g of trans fats. 3g is the equivalent of 3000mg of cholesterol! It is no wonder that heart attacks are still the leading cause of death and you are seeing young men and women dying of heart attacks, like Tim Russert.
So what does hydrogenated mean? I refer you to Wikipedia because all I’m going to do is rephrase it anyway. They are essentially formerly known as unsaturated fats turned into saturated fats.
But we already have a boatload of sources for saturated fats…. why do we need more? What is so different about these? Because people didn’t know what they were, they were slid under the door like a poisoned greasy apple. “Here my pretty, take this, its healthy! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”
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