Well, I am sure you’ve heard all the hoopla in the news over the last few months to a year about the new health hot topic: “TRANS FATS.” They even sound strange, don’t they? Say it with me: “trans fats.” As you’ve probably heard through other media outlets or witnessed yourself at the grocery store, trans fats are now in the process of being outlawed in North American food. However, until that happens, companies are required to label whether their products contain trans fats. Due to all the bad publicity trans fats have gotten recently, most companies are removing them anyway and labeling their products as “trans fat-free.”
Like almost anything in the health and medical world, words are often developed to describe something in a way that makes it seem distant or foreign to the average person. Trans fats are one of these situations. Like most people, including myself, we often hear a word like this so much that we really want to know exactly what it means. And even if we don’t fully understand it, we may pretend that we do because everyone else seems to be talking about it. So, let’s simplify the meaning of trans fats and take a closer look at what they actually are.
Understanding Trans Fats: The Basics
Trans fat is the short name for trans fatty acid. Trans fats are a type of unsaturated fat. This is a fat or fatty acid where there are one or more double bonds in the fatty acid chain. When a trans fat has only one double bond, it is considered monounsaturated (mono = one double bond). When there are more than one double bond, the fat is polyunsaturated (poly = more than one double bond). In the case of a double bond, hydrogen atoms are eliminated from the chemical makeup of the fat. Saturated fats, on the other hand, are “saturated” with hydrogen atoms.
As the number of double bonds increases, making the fat more polyunsaturated, it makes the fatty acid (in this case, the trans fat) more vulnerable to lipid peroxidation. This is one of the reasons why trans fats are considered unhealthy. Lipid peroxidation is a process that results in free radicals stealing electrons from the lipids in the cell membranes of the unsaturated fat, causing damage to the cell. The health of our body is fundamentally based on the health of our cells. If our cells are damaged, our overall health is compromised.
Trans fats can occur naturally in meat and some dairy products, but only in small quantities. In most cases today, trans fats are chemically developed in the laboratory, particularly as a side effect of the partial hydrogenation of plant oils. This process involves raising a fat’s melting point, changing its molecular structure, and reducing its ability to break down through oxidation. As a result, a portion of the original fat is transformed into a trans fat.
Fats, like protein and carbohydrates, are essential for your health and can be beneficial. However, trans fats serve neither of these purposes. They are not required by the body, nor do they provide any health benefits. In fact, consuming trans fats can increase your risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). For this reason, health authorities worldwide strongly recommend reducing and eliminating trans fats from our diets. Trans fats increase levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL – low-density lipoprotein) while decreasing levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL – high-density lipoprotein). This gives us a double whammy of a bad outcome in terms of avoiding coronary heart disease and other problems caused by high LDL cholesterol levels. Trans fats have also been linked to cancer, diabetes, obesity, and liver dysfunction. However, their relationship to the increased risk of CHD is better understood than their association with other diseases.
So, what’s the moral of the story? Well, what I am trying to tell you is that trans fats are indeed not good for you. You should be aware of them and try to avoid eating them. When health topics like this become popular, it’s usually for a good reason: they must not be good for us.
