Fat Facts 101:  The Good And The Trans Fat

Trans fat…  Most people have heard those two words, but do you know what a trans fat truly is or how to identify it on a food label?  Do you know how detrimental to your health that trans fats can be?  Do you know what would be a better choice to make when it comes to ingesting fats into your body?  Hopefully, I will clear some of these questions up for you in this article.

First off, not all fats are created equal.  Healthy fats nourish every cell in our bodies as well as many of our organs.   Healthy fats are amazing for our skin, our nails and our hair.  Believe it or not, we actually need healthy fats in our diet so that our bodies function properly.  Without the proper fats in our diet, all kinds of problems can occur with our health.  

One example relates to me… Years ago when I used to eat the Standard American Diet (referred to as the SAD diet), I was always cold, and I mean cold, frigid, freezing… I felt like an icicle most of the time!  I am talking about the fact that I used to drive around in the middle of the summer with the heat on in my car because I was cold.  I even remember one of my friends referring to the inside of my car one time as a “sauna.”   Crazy stuff!!  Are you freezing all the time?  It may be time to look at what fats you are consuming.

After I changed the way I ate and began eating whole foods (real food), I added into my diet Udo’s Choice oil, organic first cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, hemp oil, evening primrose oil, flax oil, coconut oil, began eating young Thai coconuts, durian, walnuts, almonds, Brazil nuts and avocados (not all at the same time, obviously!), for example, and my body was able to regulate my body temperature.  My cells were being nourished, and consequently, I am not freezing all the time any longer.  I feel pretty darn good when it comes to body temperature.  Yea for me!   Thank goodness for good information and a few simple lifestyle changes!

Obviously, the fats that I listed above are healthy and are better choices that you can add into your daily meals for you and your family.  Here are a couple ideas that you can use to add some good fats into your daily regime:

• A delicious snack that myself and my boyfriend love is avocado mashed on toasted Ezekiel bread (sprouted grain bread).  Yes, it is only avocado and toasted sprouted-grain bread.  Simple, I know.  It is truly delicious!  I have shared this easy recipe with so many people, and they absolutely love it!   
• Hemp seeds or oil make a fantastic addition to breakfast smoothies.  Here is a little tip… If you are making a smoothie in the morning for breakfast and don’t want to be hungry an hour after you eat it, make sure that you add a healthy fat to it.  When you add a fat to a smoothie that contains fruit, it helps release the sugar from the fruit into your bloodstream at a slower pace, therefore, it provides you with more sustained energy.  You will feel more satiated, and you will not be hungry for a while.
• Try using some olive or flax oil on your salad with some pressed garlic, basil and a pinch of Celtic sea salt… Yum!  It is a healthier choice than store-bought salad dressings, and you know exactly what is being put into your dressing.  There’s no guesswork.  There’s no need to read labels.  Whole foods are fabulous that way… There are no complicated words on their packaging to decipher (mostly because they have no packaging) and no tricky and slick advertising from the big food companies that you need to be worried about. 

This brings me to the reason that I wrote this Fat Facts 101:  The Good And The Trans Fat article  in the first place:  Trans fats.  So what is a trans fat? 

According to Answers.com a trans fat is…

A type of fat created when oils are hydrogenated, which chemically transforms them from their normal liquid state (at room temperature) into solids. During the hydrogenation procedure extra hydrogen atoms are pumped into unsaturated fat, thereby creating trans fatty acids. This process converts the mixture into a saturated fat, which obliterates its polyunsaturate benefits.

So what the heck does that mean?  In this fast-paced world that we live in, many people want to be able to buy a product at the supermarket, convenience store or bakery and have it last for weeks, if not months, and even better, for years.  That’s one of the reasons that trans fats exist.  Food companies were looking for a way to make their products last longer, so they artificially combined hydrogen with a polyunsaturated oil and got a trans fat… a liquid that was turned into a solid.  Becoming a solid makes the fat last longer and also makes it harmful to your health.  So here is a bit of a clarification, just in case you don’t realize it… That is absolutely NOT normal.  Food (real food) is supposed to grow, ripen and then rot.  If a food product is not rotting, it’s full of preservatives, chemicals, and it quite possibly contains trans fats.  When people eat processed foods including margarine, frozen foods, fast foods, baked goods and junk foods (some of the foods pictured above), to name a few, they are likely ingesting trans fats. 

After the public began to catch on to the fact that trans fats are not good for anyone, there was an effort to get a law passed that required food companies to let people know if trans fats are, in fact, contained in the foods that they are selling to the public.  After much of a struggle and who knows what else went on (you never know when it comes to what goes on behind the scenes in Washington), there was a law passed requiring food companies to come clean and let consumers in on the secret of whether their products contained trans fats or not.  Yippie!  It’s a victory for the consumer, right? 

Well, this is the shocker… there is — ready for this — a loophole in the law (thank you, again, FDA)!  If you buy a product and it says “No Trans Fats” or ”Trans Fat Free” or any other variation of that, you MUST read the label.  Food companies are allowed to add trans fats to a product if it contains less than 0.5 grams per serving.  “But that’s really not a large number, 0.05,” you say…  I beg to differ.  If you have more than one serving of a product or eat several products together that contain “No Trans Fats” ( just kidding — they really contain trans fats), you are eating trans fats without knowing it.  Very, very sneaky of the food companies.

So what can you do about it?  Read food labels.  I cannot stress enough how important it is to read food labels.  Yes, READ food labels.  I said it again.  :0)

It surprises me when I go to a supermarket and see consumers blindly pulling items off a shelf and depositing them into their carts without even so much as a glance on the back of the product to see what they’re really going to be  eating.  For purposes of identifying trans fats in a product, you can skip all of the calorie, sodium, vitamins and mineral information located in the label box.  Skip right down to the “ingredients.”  What you need to look for are any words, such as, “hydrogenated,” “partially hydrogenated,” and/or “shortening.”  If a product contains any of these words listed on the ingredients label, put it back on the shelf and step away from the item.  It contains trans fats.  Trust me.  You’re better off.  :0) 

 Make it an AMAZING day!