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elleng

(130,126 posts)
Mon May 22, 2017, 02:54 PM May 2017

The Worst Fat in the Food Supply

'As strange as it may seem to someone who is not a chemist, the movement of a single hydrogen atom from one side of a molecule to the other can change a simple, naturally occurring food ingredient into a deadly substance.

The transformed ingredient I’m speaking of is trans fatty acid, or trans fats as consumers know them, a core component of partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. For most of my life, trans fats were prominent in all manner of packaged, bakery and restaurant-prepared foods.

The descriptive “trans” refers to the fact that when a liquid vegetable oil like corn oil is treated to make it more solid and stable at room temperature — as, for example, in preparing margarine — a hydrogen atom moves from one side of a double chemical bond to the other so that two hydrogen atoms are now opposite one another instead of on the same side of the double bond.

That tiny molecular shift creates a substance that is now well known to be a potent precipitator of cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks, strokes and sudden cardiac deaths. Trans fats, in fact, are far more deadly than the saturated fats that heart-conscious people have tried to limit for decades. Their damaging effects include a rise in artery-clogging LDL cholesterol and decline in protective HDL cholesterol, damage to the lining of arteries, and inflammation, which can destabilize arterial plaque and precipitate a heart attack or stroke.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/well/the-worst-fat-in-the-food-supply.html?

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The Worst Fat in the Food Supply (Original Post) elleng May 2017 OP
say yes to LARD + BUTTER. pansypoo53219 May 2017 #1
Trans fats and refined flours are what allowed convenience foods to exist Warpy May 2017 #2
Glad you went back. Dad was ALWAYS a butter guy! elleng May 2017 #3
When you're a kid, you're trapped Warpy May 2017 #4

Warpy

(110,900 posts)
2. Trans fats and refined flours are what allowed convenience foods to exist
Mon May 22, 2017, 05:22 PM
May 2017

since it's weeks from the farm to the table, instead of the days that fresh food lasts.

While they allowed Mom to get the hell out of the house instead of being chained up in the kitchen, they do have a health cost.

I converted to butter as soon as I got away from my parents. It was back in the bad old days when margarine was supposed to be the healthy stuff and butter was pure cholesterol and therefore pure evil. However, margarine had no flavor and butter did, so all the pop health advice fell onto deaf ears.

I do love being vindicated.

Warpy

(110,900 posts)
4. When you're a kid, you're trapped
Mon May 22, 2017, 07:19 PM
May 2017

but we ate in restaurants a lot, where I was exposed to the real thing. There was no way I'd continue eating plastic when I could get glorious butter, instead. When I was stony broke, I'd extend it with safflower oil and lecithin into a spreadable butter with (alas) sharply reduced flavor, but it was still better than those nasty sticks of yellow grease in the fake butter section.

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