After knowing the evildoing of trans fats, some people asked me if it’s alright to continue eating, say fast food, but on occasional basis. For example, instead of once or more weekly, now change to once every fortnightly or monthly.
Do you drive a car? Do you know what runs a car? Yes, car runs on petrol. When fuel level in a car is low, we drive the car to the petrol station to fill in petrol, so that the fuel level is up again and we can continue driving the car. Do we fill the car with liquid other than petrol?
Imagine this: Every time when we pump petrol to the car, we mix the petrol with one small cup of plain water, or coffee, or tea, or coke, can the car still run? Yes, it can, at first. Continuing to mix the petrol with plain water (or any other liquid) once in awhile thereafter, do you think the car will break down one day because of what we fill it up with?
Now, have you got the answer to the question at the beginning of this post?
When car breaks down or koyak, we can change to a new one. And this time, we’ll never feed it with other stuff except with petrol. But can we change a new body when our body breaks down and let everything restarts again?
Since margarine is so bad, why was it being developed in the first place? Well, scientists didn’t think so at the very beginning. Over 100 years ago, the Americans had started to realize that eating animal fats such as cream, lard and butter could clog the arteries, thus should switch to consuming vegetable oils instead. But Americans liked to have toast with butter or potato with cream spread on top, and vegetable oils that were in liquid form made it difficult for them. To cater for this need, food manufacturers brought corn oils, soybean oil, sunflower seed oils and other vegetable oils to the laboratory for processing. By using the hydrogenating process, food manufacturers were able to convert liquid vegetable oils to solid form under room temperature. And by adding in artificial colouring and flavouring, the taste of this butter substitute has become as good as the original butter.
The food manufacturers initially thought that this butter substitute would have gotten rid of all the bad stuff found in animal fats. However, recent researches discovered that this man-made butter substitute, or margarine, has problems far worse than animal fats themselves. No doubt those animal fats do have their problems, but so long as we consume more vegetable and fruits, coupled that with regular exercises, these problems can be overcome. On the other hand, as margarine is developed through process of hydrogenation, the fat has turned to become trans fat that our body is unable to metabolize (as like the nature cannot decompose plastic materials). It is like planting a time bomb inside our body, thus it is worse than animal fat like butter.Due to the awareness and unpopularity of trans fats, the Americans have started to reduce trans fats in their diet as much as they can. For example, McDonald’s in the USA has claimed to stop using hydrogenated shortening (trans fats) in their products. But is McDonald’s in Malaysia also doing the same? And what about other products that contain trans fats, such like crackers, potato chips, cookies, popcorns, cakes and breads that some of us eat daily?
Oh, I think we still need to eat this plastic stuff for sometimes…
For the past few decades, due to the influence of the western diet, we take bread and butter as breakfast. Subsequently, people starting to say that butter is not good, so we switch to margarine instead. Developed as a butter substitute, as margarine is made with vegetable oils, people consider anything that is plant or vegetable-based is better. Over prolonged period of time, this has created a lot of health problems such as high blood pressures, high cholesterol, heart attack, stroke, allergies, reduced body immunity, obesity and so on.
Margarine is not any healthier than cream and butter. Developed over 100 years ago, margarine is made by hydrogenating edible vegetable oil (adding hydrogen to vegetable oil so to make it in solid form at room temperature and has longer shelf life), and thus making it to contain Trans Fatty Acids, or Trans Fats. As we learnt from The plastic fats: Trans Fats, trans fats are almost non-existent in the natural world, and our human body simply cannot decompose them naturally. Consuming trans fats is like consuming plastic itself, we should thus avoid it as much as we can. However, there are still many people out there mistake trans fats as good stuff. And like going for an all-you-can-eat buffet meal, they simply eat as much as they can. Sadly to say, they actually don’t know they are eating ‘plastic’ (trans fats).
Hydrogenated vegetable oil is the worst oil that we can take. If we have allergies, cardiovascular and other diseases, we must stop eating trans fats, or at least avoid consuming much. Even if we are healthy now, we should also learn to reduce the consumption of trans fats. Otherwise, our health will deteriorate overtime.
Maybe some of us are unaware of this fact, that consuming trans fats is almost like eating plastic, or swallowing chewing gum. This is because trans fats, plastic and chewing gum are all man-made products, and they are non-existent on earth. They are nearly non-biodegradable too. How come we don’t eat plastic or chewing gum but consume trans fats on the other hand?
Take a look at this video excerpt, at the bottom of this paragraph, from a documentary titled “Super Size Me,” where they carried an experiment to see how the McDonald's foods stay after 10 weeks. They purchased some McDonald’s burgers and fries, and regular burger and fries from the street, put them all inside transparent glass containers individually, and see how long the food would take to decompose. As the experiment goes on, we can see that all the buns and meats have got rotted overtime, but the fries still stay fresh looking, as if they were just being bought on the day itself. Even molds and bacteria don’t want to eat the trans fats that are covering the fries (trans fats prolong the shelf life of the fries), so why do we human beings eat them? After taking trans fats into our body, how does our body metabolize them normally? Not only trans fats can be used as source of fat, it’s also now being used as food preservative!
So, what types of foods contain trans fats?
Spreads, such as margarine and shortening;
Fast food, such as fries, fried chicken, burgers, pies, pizzas;
Frozen food, such as frozen pies, pot pies, waffles, pizzas;
Baked goods, such as doughnuts, cookies, cakes, pastries;
Chips;
Crackers;
Popcorns;
Breakfast cereals;
Energy bars;
Candy
In a nutshell: Trans fats or hydrogenated fats are artificial. They are worse than saturated fat and our bodies don’t know what to do with them. They have a double negative effect on cholesterol as they increase LDL (bad cholesterol) and decrease HDL (good cholesterol). Remember, LDL clogs our arteries while HDL helps to clear them. Can we eliminate trans fats entirely from our diet? Probably not. Instead, our goal is to have as little trans fat in our diet as possible. Happy eating!
The FATS family has many members, such as saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, and monounsaturated fats. Some of them are good, while others are bad; Some are natural fats, while others are simply artificial or man made. Trans Fats, or Trans-Fatty Acids, are largely artificial fats (a small amount of trans fats occur naturally in meat and dairy products) , and they are real bad fats! Trans fats are made by a chemical process called partial hydrogenation, where hydrogen atoms are added to liquid vegetable oil (an otherwise healthy monounsaturated fat) and converted into a solid fat. In short, it transforms liquid fats to become solid fats at room temperature. This makes what seemed an ideal fat for the food industry to work with because of its high melting point, its creamy, smooth texture and its reusability in deep-fat frying.
Because of its altered and enhanced properties, trans fats extend shelf life of food. They also add a certain pleasing mouth-feel to all manner of processed foods. Think of buttery crackers and popcorn, crispy french fries, crunchy potato chips, creamy frosting and melt-in-your-mouth pies, cakes and pastries. All these foods owe those qualities to trans fats.
Hydrogenated fats were initially seen as a healthier alternative to saturated fats: using margarine was deemed better for us than using butter, yet numerous studies now conclude that trans fats are actually worse. True, saturated fats raise total and bad (LDL) cholesterol levels. Trans fats do the same, but they also strip levels of good (HDL) cholesterol, the kind that helps unclog arteries. Trans fats also increase triglyceride levels in the blood, adding to our risk of cardiovascular disease. Basically, the more solid the fat at room temperature, the more it clogs our arteries.
After knowing the evildoing of trans fats, some people asked me if it’s alright to continue eating, say fast food, but on occasional basis. For example, instead of once or more weekly, now change to once every fortnightly or monthly.
