Even more dangerous transfat substitute….

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Focus on Your Health:

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Friday, 1-26-2007

Even more dangerous transfat substitute….

Reuters on Yahoo Health news & other online news sources have recently reported absolutely horrible & scary news.

Someone noticed that transfats (aka: trans fats & “partially hydrogenated” oil) were getting seriously bad press & beginning to be outlawed & decided to try FULLY hydrogenated oils as a substitute.

The good news is that this avoids having to label your food as having transfats & avoid any transfat bans like the one New York City enacted recently. And, this would enable the food company to keep using a fat substitute that has a long shelf life.

The horrible & scary news reported recently is that fully saturated oils (aka interesterified oils or fats) are not as bad as transfats, they are MUCH WORSE.

The study recently reported found that fully saturated oils, or interesterified oils or fats, had very similar impact on lowering the beneficial HDL levels in people who ate them that was similar to transfats; and it also sharply increased blood sugar levels. Ouch.

Too high blood sugar levels usually cause some form of cardiovascular disease & circulation problems: nerve damage; blindness; heart attacks; strokes; impotence; peripheral artery disease; circulation problem induced mental decline; & even foot amputation.

Even worse, there are often no signs this is happening when a person’s blood sugar gets elevated like this. So, it is common to have some damage done to your health before you know it’s happening to you.

(This is why you should get your fasting glucose & the 90 day moving average of your glucose levels called the HBA1C test done every so often so you can take early action if your blood sugar level becomes too high.)

But there’s more bad news. I suspect that the most likely outfits to use this kind of fat are fast food & snack food companies.

And, typically, the people who consume these foods now are younger & less educated & poorer than the people likely to get periodic blood sugar tests & who are able to do so.

Simply put, this is a recipe for disaster.

In my opinion, any company that uses this kind of fat & continues to use it now that this information is in the public domain is guilty of unethical behavior. And, a good case can be made they are also guilty of criminal negligence.

This would make a great case for a law firm specializing in class action suits.

Meanwhile, any time you buy a packaged food, read the label. It’s not enough to see it’s listed as having zero transfats.

If it has partially hydrogenated, fully hydrogenated, fully saturated, or interesterified oils or fats listed in the ingredients, it will harm your health to eat it.

So, don’t buy it or eat it.

Restaurants are tougher. Too often they don’t really know what is in the bulk oils & fats they buy in the first place, so they can’t inform you since they themselves don’t know.

Today, you have four choices.

1. Eat much less often in restaurants.

2. Only eat in restaurants that DO know for sure all of what kinds of oils they use & use none of these health damaging fats.

3. Or eat in restaurants that are so health oriented they ONLY use extra virgin olive oil or small amounts of butter or other oils, like sesame or walnut oil.

4. Only eat foods to which no fats are added when you eat in restaurants. That means fruit, fruit or vegetable juice; uncooked or steamed vegetables; salad with no dressing, etc. (That one is hard to do when you are hungry & defeats the purpose of going to a restaurant to a large extent.)

So, I think choice 2 & 3 or maybe some of choice 1 are the winners.