| After years of denial our country finally woke up to the importance of avoiding trans fats in our diets. In 2006 the FDA finally began requiring food manufacturers to list the amount of trans fats found in their products. This created a new marketing opportunity for the clever food industry. By listing a product as having “no trans fats” it could give the illusion that the product was somehow a healthy, or healthier, choice. While this MAY be true, often nothing could be farther from the truth.
For clarity, a trans fat (also called hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fat/oil) is a processed fat that has been treated with hydrogen in order to make it more solid and give it a longer shelf life. Trans fats are used in baked goods like doughnuts, breads, crackers, potato chips, cookies and many other processed food products like margarine and salad dressings. They have been shown to disrupt cellular function and are implicated in heart disease, diabetes, cancer, low birth weight, obesity and immune dysfunction. They are about as evil as a food substance can get. In fact, we believe trans fats, along with refined sugars and processed foods, are responsible for devastating the health of our nation.
THERE IS NO ACCEPTABLE AMOUNT OF TRANS FATS and they should be avoided at all costs.
So how are food manufacturers using the “no trans fat” label to mislead consumers? Two ways, first, according to FDA requirements, some trans fats can be present and the product can still be labeled "no trans fat". Unbelievable, but totally true! If you don’t believe us, just read a few labels... it won't take you long to find hydrogenated oils or other trans fats on products that are labeled "no trans fat".
A second way we are being duped is by the implication that the "no trans fat" label means a product has only good fats. This is complete bunk! It’s possible for a food to have no trans fats, but to have other damaged fats which are also dangerous to our health. For the sake of this discussion we will call all these fats “bad” fats. (Please note that we are not including saturated fats in our definition of “bad” fats; we are only referring to fats that have been damaged or molecularly modified.)
The science behind fats is complicated and we will simplify here. There are many resources to learn more about fats provided at the end of this article. Please use these if you require a “deeper dive”.
There are four primary elements that damage fats; exposure to heat, chemicals, oxygen or light. After being exposed to these elements, a fat that was perfectly healthy will become rancid, oxidized, contaminated and/or nutritionally void.
Most vegetable oils found in the supermarket are damaged, or “bad”, fats before they are even used to prepare foods. They have been grown using pesticides and chemicals, processed using heat and chemicals, refined to remove key nutrients, and all the while exposed to oxygen. To add insult to injury, they are then packaged in clear bottles that expose them to light for extended periods of time. At the end of the day most of these oils are junk, pure and simple.
Now if a product was prepared by the manufacturer using these “bad” fats, the product will be tainted and unhealthy. For instance, your bag of potato chips may not have any trans, or hydrogenated, fats in them. However, because they were prepared at excessively high temperatures in oil that was most certainly already damaged during processing, they are not much better for you than if they had included trans fats. DEGREE OF SEVERITY ASIDE, DAMAGED FATS ARE NEVER HEALTHY FOODS!!!
This is the nasty reality clever marketing is covering up. So what we have are millions of “health savvy” consumers purchasing products with “no trans fats” thinking they are doing the right thing. Instead they are feeding their families dangerous and damaging fats that are associated with a multitude of serious and life threatening diseases.
The solution:
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Continue to read the nutrition labels to determine what the food contains... don't let the flashy marketing slogans on the front of packages mislead you
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Don’t purchase products that have been cooked in oils at high temperatures
- Don’t purchase oils, or oil containing products such as salad dressings, that are not labeled “expeller pressed” or “first cold pressed” and packaged in opaque bottles
- Use your common sense when evaluating a product you are going to feed your family… if a food label says “no trans fat” but you find refined flour, sugar, chemicals or other non-food substances on the food label realize its not a healthy food, with or without the trans fat.
Other interesting facts about “bad” fats:
- Often vitamin E and lecithin are taken out of fats during processing and sold to the vitamin industry
- In many of the studies in which saturated fats were said to cause disease, hydrogenated trans fats were actually the fat that was used. Many cultures have used saturated fats for hundreds of years without ill effects. No culture has ever used hydrogenated fats without increasing their rate of disease.
- Pesticides are usually fat-soluble and have an affinity for the oils in the seeds of plants that are sprayed. If you are not buying organic oil you are increasing your exposure to these toxic chemicals.
Sources:
- Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer For Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol by Dr. Mary Enig
- Nutrition Made Simple by Robert Crayhon
- Dr. Bob's Trans Fat Survival Guide by Dr Robert Demaria
- Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
- The Cholesterol Myths by Uffe Ravnskov
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