There are four kinds of fats: monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, saturated fat, and trans fat. Monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat are the good fats. It is generally accepted that consumption of saturated fat should be kept low, especially for adults. Trans fat (which means trans fatty acids) is the worst kind of fat, far worse than saturated fat.
Partial hydrogenation is an industrial process used to make good oil, such as soybean oil, into perfectly bad oil. The process is used to make oil more solid; provide longer shelf life in baked products; provide longer fry-life for cooking oils, and provide a certain kind of texture. The big problem is that partially hydrogenated oil is laden with trans fat.
It is the trans fat created by the partially hydrogenation of vegetable oils that you should try to eliminate completely from your diet. Don’t be too concerned with the kind of naturally occurring trans fat found in small amounts in pomegranates, cabbage, peas, or the type found in the meat and milk of cows, sheep and goats.
Partially hydrogenated oils are commonly found in processed foods like commercial baked products such as cookies, cakes and crackers, and even in bread. They are also used as cooking oils (called “liquid shortening”) for frying in restaurants.
Health effects
One of the reasons that partially hydrogenated oils are used is to increase the product’s shelf life, but they decrease your shelf life.
Trans fats cause significant and serious lowering of HDL (good) cholesterol and a significant and serious increase in LDL (bad) cholesterol; make your arteries more rigid; cause major clogging of arteries; cause insulin resistance; cause or contribute to type 2 diabetes; and cause or contribute to other serious health problems.
The ability of your blood vessels to dilate (that is to enlarge or expand) was 29 percent lower in people who ate a high trans fat diet compared to those on a saturated fat diet. Vessel function is known to be impaired in patients with cardiovascular disease. Blood levels of HDL (good) cholesterol were 21 percent lower in the high trans fat diet group compared to those in the saturated fat group.
Keeping your HDL cholesterol high may help to reduce the risk of clot-related stroke in elderly men.
LDL (bad) cholesterol: The main source of cholesterol buildup and blockage in the arteries.
HDL (good) cholesterol: Carries cholesterol from your blood back to your liver, which processes the cholesterol for elimination from your body. HDL makes it less likely that excess cholesterol in your blood will be deposited in your coronary arteries. (HDL levels, to be considered “normal,” should be at least 35 – 40 mg/DL.)
Blood vessels: There are three types of blood vessels: arteries, veins, and capillaries. Your arteries carry blood away from your heart. Your capillaries connect your arteries to veins. Your veins carry your blood back to your heart.
By most conservative estimate, replacing partially hydrogenated fat in your diet with natural unhydrogenated vegetable oils would prevent approximately 30,000 premature coronary deaths per year, and evidence suggests this number is closer to 100,000 premature deaths annually.
30,000 to 100,000 premature deaths each year means between 82 and 274 each day!
Daily intake of trans fat should be less than 2 grams, perhaps less than 1 gram.
How much trans fat is in the products that we eat?
In a recent survey of takeout foods, they were randomly selected and analyzed for their trans fat content.
- Five small chicken nuggets contained nearly 4 grams of trans fat.
- An apple Danish contained about 2.7 grams of trans fat.
- Two vegetable spring rolls contained about 1.7 grams of trans fat.
- One fillet of battered fish contained about 1.2 grams of trans fat — and that’s not including the trans fat in the French fries.
- In two slices of pizza about 1 gram of trans fat.
- One large order of French fries contains 6 grams.
- A baked apple pie contains 4.5 grams.
How much trans fat do you consume in a day? If you are extremely selective about what you eat, you can consume virtually no trans Fats. However some are consuming in excess of 20 grams of trans fat per day. How much are you consuming?
So what’s better Margarine or Butter?
Butter
- Both have the same amount of calories.
- Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams compared to 5 grams for margarine.
- Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter.
- Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods.
- Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few only because they are added!
- Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.
- Butter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years.
Margarine
- Very high in trans fatty acids.
- Triple risk of coronary heart disease.
- Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol)
- Lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol).
- Increases the risk of cancers by up to five fold…
- Lowers quality of breast milk…
- Decreases immune response…
- Decreases insulin response.
HERE IS THE BEST PART!!!
Margarine is just ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC!!!!
This fact alone should be enough to have you avoid margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing the molecular structure of the substance)
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