May 14, 2014 by PPNF (Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation)
In late 1999, the FDA found health-harming hydrogenated trans fats in 100% on the crackers, 95% of cookies, and 80% of the frozen breakfast foods that the researchers sampled from supermarket shelves.
Today, trans fats are again gaining national attention as the FDA considers banning their use in the U.S. These artificial industrial trans fats are formed when liquid vegetable oils are made into solid fats by adding hydrogen. These hydrogenated trans fats increase the stability, shelf life, and palatability of processed foods, but they take a severe toll on health.
Human consumption of industrial trans fats has been linked to increased cardiovascular disease, strokes, diabetes, cancer, obesity, liver dysfunction, infertility, and premature infant deaths.
The word was out, and consumers took notice. Fearing lost sales, most manufactures began to phase out trans fats; in 1999, the FDA estimated that 30% of margarine had already been reformulated to remove them. By the beginning of 2006, the FDA required all food manufacturers to list trans fats on food labels. According to the FDA, “trans fats intake among American consumers has declined from 4.6 grams per day in 2003 to about 1 gram per day in 2012.”
If you want to avoid trans fats, then make sure to read the food labels. Here are a few steps you can take to avoid them. First, be especially careful when considering eating any of these ten types of commercially processed foods:
Microwave popcorn, coffee “creamers”, some candies, crackers, cookies, commercial baked goods (such as pastries, cakes, and pies), packaged breakfast and snack foods, margarine, vegetable shortening, and deep-fried foods.
Secondly, here’s the challenge: Not all of these foods will have trans fats, and not all will be labeled. But if they do have labels, you can easily determine which do and don’t have trans fats by reading the labels carefully. Just look for the word hydrogen tucked inside larger words, i. e. , if you read “partially hydrogenated oil” or “hydrogenated vegetable shortening” on the label, it does contain artificial trans fats.
Not all trans fats are artificial, though. This is what the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation has been teaching for years. A small amount of naturally occurring trans fats found in product of ruminant animals have a protective effect on human health. These natural fatty acids actually seem to help in the same areas where artificial trans fats are harmful.
These conjugated linoleic acids (CLAs) have been shown to improve immune function, fight cancer, improve ratios of body fat to muscle, increase bone mineral density, improve insulin levels, and balance ratios of HDL to LDL cholesterol levels
CLAs are found abundantly in raw, pastured, organic dairy and the meat from grass fed ruminant animals. Your best choice, then, for optimal health is to avoid processed and fast foods, and instead eat, natural, unprocessed foods – choose butter over margarine, for example – thereby avoiding the serious health issues tied to the consumption of artificial trans fats.
To learn more go to www.ppnf.org or better yet sign up for their blogs or become a member of the organization and have access to all their past articles and books.
Stay tuned next month for a summary of the benefits of coconut oil for food and as a medicine.
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