Trans Fat: The Silent Killer
A description of trans fats, what they do to you, and how you can avoid them.
In the early 1900s, food manufacturers began to realize that adding hydrogen ions to oils made them last longer, and was cheaper and healthier than conventional preservatives. The companies called them “Trans Fats”. All through the 20th century the public bought into them, and they were a primary ingredient in a huge percentage of all foods. In the early 1990s scientists began to do research on the fats, and not only found that they were no healthier than common preservatives, but they could be the reason for the sudden spike in coronary heart disease over the past several decades.
Trans fats compromise the body’s natural way of breaking down food, ultimately resulting in abnormal amounts of fat circulating in the blood stream for too long. Because of the high fatty acid presence in the blood stream, the arteries and veins can form little rough patches, which fat then sticks to. This leads to buildups of fat, blocking the flow of blood to the heart. In other words, a heart attack.
Many foods are labeled as “Trans fat free!” but this does NOT mean that they have no trans fats. If a product contains less than .5g of anything listed on the nutrition facts label, it can round it down to 0g. So if there are .49g of trans fat in one serving of Oreos (which is three cookies), if you eat six cookies or more like most people would you are consuming 1g of trans fat. This does not mean that you can’t tell how much trans fat is in the product though. All you have to do is check the ingredients list. If you see the word “Hydrogenated” in the list, then the product contains trans fat.
So save yourself and the people around you and stop eating trans fats.
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