Avoid Trans Fats like the Plague.....
Trans fat (trans fatty acid) is an artery-clogging type of fat that forms when vegetable oils are hardened into margarine or shortening. But you’ll find it in lots of products, not just margarines and spreads. Some of the worst offenders include:
- Fried foods of all kinds (fried chicken, French fries)
- Ready-made baked goods (cookies, pastries)
- Chips and crackers
- Doughnuts
Additionally, don’t forget that lots of trans fat can hide in unexpected places, such as salad dressings and mayonnaise. If the label doesn’t specifically tell you the amount of trans fat included, look for shortening, hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil in the list of ingredients. In fact, even if a label says zero grams of trans fat, and the product contains one of these ingredients, it still contains trans fats.
This is because food companies can “round down” if their product contains 0.5 grams of trans fat or less, and just call it “0.”
Of course, that is a per-serving measure, so if you eat more than one serving of a food that contains hydrogenated oils, you can be sure that you’re ingesting measurable amounts of trans fats. The higher up on the list these ingredients appear, the more trans fat it has.
Trans fat delivers a double-whammy of bad effects on your cardiovascular system, as it increases “bad” cholesterol (LDL), while lowering the “good” cholesterol (HDL). The exact opposite of what you really want …
In addition to the increased risk of heart disease, trans fat can also cause major clogging of your arteries and contribute to type 2 diabetes. And now we can add disruption of the electrical flow in your heart to the list as well.
Part of the scientific confusion about saturated fats relates to the fact that your body is capable of synthesizing the saturated fatty acids that it needs from carbohydrates -- these saturated fatty acids are principally the same ones that are present in dietary fats of animal origin.
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