What Is Trans Fat?
What You Really Need to Know
What is trans fat? It is all over the news and takes part of the blame for America’s decline in overall health, including soaring obesity and childhood obesity rates. For my quick fix I figured I would be the big hero in my household by not bringing home any foods with bad ingredients. The problem is I never found the specific "unhealthy" words in the list of ingredients.
What no one ever told me is that trans fat is listed on the ingredients as partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, hydrogenated vegetable oil, margarine, or shortening.
The label of one of my favorite (and what I thought was healthy) snacks shows 0 grams of trans fat. Under current Food and Drug Administration regulations, if something has less than .5 grams of fat, the product can list a "0".
If you see partially hydrogenated vegetable oil listed in the ingredients, but the package claims “0” grams of trans fat per serving, you could still be eating as much as .4 grams. If you eat three portions a day, you have a problem.
Basically what is trans fat to my body is not trans fat to the food manufacturers and the current FDA food labeling system.
What Is Trans Fat?
Partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is a vegetable oil that has been treated with hydrogen to make it solid and give it a longer shelf life. Yes, even my kids learn a little chemistry once in a while.
What you need to know is any trans fat will give you heart disease and it will make you fat.
Hmmm, and we keep eating it and giving it to our kids.
So what is trans fat doing in our food? This evil oil is cheap and it lasts a long time. Think nuclear holocaust with the only remaining survivors being cockroaches and Twinkies. Many people recognize that it is bad for you, but it is hidden in foods at the grocery store and in many restaurants, especially fast food. It is found in many fried and processed foods.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School examined data from 41,518 women and found that women whose fat calories came from trans fat were heavier after 8 years than women who ate the same number of calories without it.
You need some fat for a healthy diet, which is why all those fat free diets that were in vogue a couple of decades ago did not work.
You can find information on good fats such as olive oil by clicking here.
How to Indentify Trans Fat in Foods
You often find oils in food listed as partially, fractionated, fully, etc. I find it wholly and completely confusing, so here’s what you need to know:
Fractionated oil, fully hydrogenated oil, and interesterified oil are not classified as trans fats, but they still are not good for you and should be avoided.
Now that I think I have my healthy diet a bit under control, there is a new evil substance in the wings. A substitute named interesterified oil has basically the same negative killer effect, yet it is not considered to be trans fat. Interesterified? Even the name sounds frightening. I have found interesterified oil in snack foods such as cookies.
Does My Car Make the Dinner Decisions?
Once I understood the wicked nature of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, I realized I could be consuming it at a restaurant, where I had no labels to read and no control over ingredients in my food. This became especially problematic on those nights when I wished I could let my car make dinner decisions for me.
Fortunately or unfortunately, my Honda’s navigation system can provide a list of the closest fast food places. Who said technology wasn’t making our lives easier?
I thought about that list and then I thought about my kids safely buckled into their car seats behind me. Would I really put my kids in a five point, super safety rated, police installed car seat, and then fill them with fried fast food? I desperately tried to think of alternative choices.
I consulted my car’s navigation system again, using the key words of “restaurants” and “vegetables”. My car’s navigation system plotted a course into a telephone pole. Driving past fast food chains was going to be harder than I thought.
But on that day, I resisted the temptation of the quick stop for fast food. I told myself I was not really
eliminating fast food
from my diet, just partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. I know that some major food chains are eliminating this bad oil. The problem is that the oil that some fast food chains use as a replacement may not be that much healthier for you.
So what can you eat instead of fast food? More ideas coming soon on fast food and eating out.
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