Just about every diet and health program around talks about trans fats, and that they should be avoided. While most people recognize that they aren’t good for you, most don’t really understand exactly what it is. Trans fat, or trans fatty acids, is an unsaturated fatty acid that is manufactured as a result of a process known as hydrogenation. In the process, a trans arrangement of the carbon atoms become adjacent to the double bonds. This is all fairly scientific and technical information, but to put it simply, it is a form of fat that is manufactured and added to many processed foods people at today. Trans fats are rarely found in nature.
Watch Out for Hidden Trans Fats
If you’re trying to avoid trans fats in your diet, you will need to do more than just glance at labels. Even foods that say ‘0g trans-fat’ may actually have as much as a half of a gram of this substance, which is still unhealthy. Read through the actual ingredients list and see if there are any that say partially hydrogenated oils, which are trans fats. If they are listed, then that food has trans fats and should be avoided. A great example is Canola Oil. Canola oil does not list trans fats on the labels because they are not there early on in the processing of this oil. Instead, these trans fats are formed because of the way the seeds are processed to make the oil.
Why Avoid Trans Fats
If you aren’t already aware, you want to avoid trans fats because it causes the bad cholesterol, LDL, to go up and the good cholesterol, HDL, to go down. It has been linked to heart disease and many other health problems as well. To put it simply, it is extremely bad for you and should always be avoided.
