Trans fat causes obesity, diabetes, birth defects, cancer, liver disease, prevents breast milk, affects your vision, destroys your bones and muscles.
It causes serious damage to your health. It will depress your immune system and is a likely cause of inflammation.
Inflammation is emerging as a common cause of many diseases including heart disease. It is also emerging that the modern western diet consisting of loads of sugar, highly processed foods, trans fats, low in fibre and devoid of essential nutrients is a leading cause of inflammation. Environmental toxins are another leading contributor to the rise of inflammation.
An unnatural substance, trans fat is manufactured by food science for the convenience of production and shelf life and it is highly toxic. It is consumed every day by millions of people around the world in the form of margarine, Crisco and other like products.
Trans fat, in the form of hydrogenated oils, is a modified fat. In other words, it is a plastic fat.
"Eating it is like ingesting plastic," says Ronni Litz Julien, an Aventura nutritionist who advocates a countywide ban on the substance. "The body's cells don't know what to do with it."
Fat City by Tamara Lush, Miami New Times, Feb 15, 2007
When you eat anything made with or cooked in trans fat you are essentially eating a toxic plastic food.
Trans fat is usually made from a polyunsaturated fat (vegetable oil) that has been "transformed" when food science adds a hydrogen atom to the composition of the oil. The purpose is to make these fats solid and more stable with a longer shelf-life. In their natural form, polyunsaturated fats are unstable. They go rancid rapidly and are damaged when used at high cooking temperatures. This results in the formation of free radicals which cause disease. Unfortunately trans fats are absorbed by your body at the cellular level and will destroy your tissues. Trans fats also result in the oxidation of cholesterol. This results in the consumption of high levels of a very bad form of cholesterol. This bad cholesterol clogs the arteries with aterial plaque and leads to heart disease.
Natural polyunsaturated fats are dietary sources of omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. These fatty acids are critical to your good health. When these polyunsaturated oils are old or damaged by heat they form free radicals which are also responsible for the the cause of disease. Never cook with polyunsaturated oils such as safflower, corn, sunflower or soybean oil. Consume these oil in their raw state to reap the benefits of the omega fatty acids.
Olive oil can withstand low heat but is best consumed in a raw form.
The two best oils for cooking are organic coconut
Learn more about free radicals and the benefits of antioxidants.
