There is so much great stuff out there to eat, why the heck would you ever want to put something as artery-damaging and processed into your bloodstream like a trans-fat? Trans Fatty Acids are mainly formed when liquid vegetable oil is turned into a solid fat at room temperature, by adding hydrogen to the oil, a process called hydrogenation. Hydrogention greatly increases the shelf life of the oil, and some claim it also increases the flavor stability of products made with hydrogenated oil. Personally, I would choose a cookie baked with organic butter over margerine any day. Listen, take pure vegetable shortening like cisco and put a teaspoon of it on the tip of your tongue. Yuck, right? Take a teaspoon of real butter on the tip of your tongue. Quite a different taste altogether. Do the same with coconut oil. And if you want to deep-fry something, say shrimp tempura, why not try coconut oil or ghee. The taste difference will amaze you, and in some amounts, it is not detrimental to your health the way a trans-fat would be.
How bad are trans-fats for you? For people in the know like myself, a professional chef and health counselor, we now that trans-fats are the worst fats to put in your body. Currently, legislation is being passed in America that makes it law for food manufactures to label trans-fats in their products, and in many states the use of trans-fats in restaurants and other public food purveyors, is strictly prohibited. You can shoot it into your veins in private, if you insist, but in NYC, even the local McDonalds has had to go back to using non-hydrogenated vegetable oils to fry your french fries. But you don’t have to take my word for. Take a look at the Harvard Medical School’s stance on TFA’s and find out for yourself just why you should never buy the stuff. Just make it a regular habit when you are doing your grocery shopping to read the nutritional labels on the packages, and if you see “hydrogenated oil”, or “contains trans-fats”, just walk away. Food is big business people, and you really want to be very wary of food products on the market that are processed, even if they are labeled organic. Sometimes how a food is processed is more important than what that food source actually is. Simply by adding hydrogen to coconut oil, you turn a highly beneficial vegetable oil into something very toxic for the human body. And it all adds up. In America alone, 12.5 million people suffer from Cardiac Disease, and TFA’s have been directly linked to increasing plasma Low Density Lipoproteins, (molecules that carry fats around the bloodstream), decreasing High Density Lipoproteins, (considered to be the “good” molecules), and increasing the cholesterol “homocysteine” in the bloodstream. Basically, these three factors combined are considered to be the heart-attack trifecta!
