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So it's pretty common knowledge that trans fats
are bad for us and we should avoid them. Yet many of us may not know why this is
so important and how vigilant we may need to be in avoiding them.
Trans fats are essentially
refined oils, or, fats in liquid form that have the element Hydrogen chemically
bonded into them. This practice became so popular in the mass production food
world because hydrogenating fats allows them to be practically invulnerable to
rancidity, thus allowing shelf lives to approach immortality. The downside: the
speedy delivery of your own mortality.
Somewhere between 30,000 to
100,000 premature deaths in the U.S. are linked to the consumption of trans
fats. The size of these numbers are due to the way trans fats effect each and
every one of us down to the cellular level; making cells less efficient at
absorbing nutrients and also expelling waste. This has a chain effect that
undermines all of our most essential systems of survival. This is why the
Institute of Medicine has zero tolerance for trans fats, and states that,
essentially, there is no level of hydrogenated fats that is safe to consume.
Here's the trick: In order to
be sure that you are avoiding all forms of trans fats in the health food you eat, you need to be doing much
more than just glancing at the nutritional information on packaging. You need to
read the ingredients. The FDA actually allows manufacturers to label their
products as having "0" (that's zero) trans fats if there is .5 or less grams of
trans fats per serving. What ends up happening, however, is the shrinkage of
serving sizes in order to capitalize on the "zero trans fat" buzz. In other
words, most people eat far more than the specified serving size, thus thinking
they are not consuming any of this dangerous substance called trans fats.
We have to pay double attention
to the actual ingredients listed, and if anything in the vein of "hydrogenated
oils", "partially hydrogenated", or "shortening" pops up, drop it and run. Even
when the package may tout a calming "zero trans fat" declaration - if any of
those aforementioned key-words are in the ingredients - the food has trans fat.
Author:
Dabannon
HEALTHY EATING TIPS
SEPTEMBER '07 TIPS
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