Heart Disease
Print This Post
Harmful Trans Fats
2.25 Hydrogenation of vegetable liquid oils by the junk food industry turns them into solid more dangerous trans fats, commonly known as conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), at room temperature. For example, to make margarine, cheap and rancid oils are subjected to high temperature and high pressure in the presence of a catalyst, nickel and then soap like emulsifier and starch are squeezed into the mixture to give a better consistency. It is then again subjected to high heat, as it is steam cleaned and then bleached. Chemical dyes and flavours are added to make it resemble butter. After which it is compressed and packaged in blocks or tubs and this unhealthy and extremely harmful trans fat-laden product is sold as health food! Sometimes trans fats do occur in nature in meat and dairy products but these natural trans fats are not harmful and some are even beneficial to health.
2.26 Trans fats are used by the food industry because they make the food have better flavour and taste and above all increase the shelf life. This may be profitable commercially for the food industry and have helped the junk food market to explode, but it wreaks havoc with the health. Consumption of artery-clogging trans fats – also called trans fatty acids (TFA) raises levels of bad cholesterol (LDL), reduces good cholesterol (HDL) and increases the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol which is a powerful indicator of coronary heart disease.
2.27 When the oil is heated beyond the smoking point, it undergoes some structural changes and becomes toxic. Simply high heating and reheating oils to high temperatures, and deep frying also changes them into trans fats. Since trans fats don’t occur widely in nature, your body has a much harder time processing them than it does other normal types of fat. So they accumulate in the blood vessels – arteries, veins and capillaries. Trans fats have been implicated as causative or exacerbating factors for a multiplicity of lifestyle diseases including cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease, liver dysfunction, inflammation, infertility, muscle loss, cancers, diabetes, immune problems etc. etc
2.28 Trans fats can cause you to gain weight as they interfere with the metabolism and breakdown of essential fatty acids. The body also gets confused as to what to do with trans fats, it tries to excrete them through the skin, but if it can’t, then skin problems like boils, cysts or acne develop. Trans fats also lowers the volume of cream in milk of lactating mothers, thus lowering the overall quality available to the infant. It correlates to low birth weight and increased risk of breast cancer in women.
2.29 More alarmingly, children consuming higher amounts of trans fats in the junk diets may be increasingly likely to develop allergic diseases such as asthma, hay fever and eczema, according to a study published in the medical journal “Allergy”. Yet despite the danger, it is a Herculean task especially for younger people – whose new age nutritional regimes are rapidly being Americanised – to avoid trans fats, since a great number of processed and refined junk foods contain them. As a thumb rule, only 5 grams of trans fats (found in one samosa) a day will raise the risk of heart attack by 25%. So be warned! A portion of fast food French fries contains 6.8 grams of trans fats.
2.30 It is a pity that extremely harmful foods loaded with trans fats are aggressively marketed as health foods with eye-catching and misleading labels, such as “cholesterol free”, “low fat”, “low in saturated fat”, “light”, “sugar free”, “100% natural”, “no animal fat” etc. etc. Most of us don’t realise how much trans fat we eat. Over 90% of foods produced commercially contain trans fats. Trans fats are present in most refined oils and all pre-packed and fried foods. The biggest source of trans fats in India is ghee substitute – vanaspati – that must be avoided like the “plague”. Restaurants and fast food chains mainly use Vanaspati for cheapness, convenience and taste.
