Originally published February 7 2006
Professor distinguishes between the different kinds of fat in foods and their effects on your health
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Wisconsin's progressive newspaper, The Capital Times, features an article by Richard Hartel, a professor of food engineering who provides an informal and enlightening view of healthy and unhealthy fats.
Yet each discovery about nutrition leads to a wave of new and, we hope, healthful foods as manufacturers respond to consumer concerns.
Years ago, we were told that margarine was better to eat than butter because the saturated fats found in butter could lead to coronary heart disease.
Tropical fats were also bad because they had high levels of particularly unhealthy saturated fats, those with long, straight carbon chains.
Recent studies have shown that partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils leads to formation of fats, called trans fatty acids, which may be even worse for us than the saturated fats we're supposed to avoid.
Due to these health concerns, as of Jan. 1, all foods are required to have trans fat content, along with saturated fat content, listed on the nutritional label.
Trans and cis fatty acids are similar except for their shape: trans fatty acid molecules have a somewhat straight, but kinked, carbon chain, whereas cis fatty acids, which are the predominant form found in nature, are bent.
This difference in conformation, one kinked and the other bent, gives these fats different physical properties and health impacts.The trans form, with a kinked chain, has a melting point close to room temperature, making hydrogenated vegetable oils particularly useful in shortenings and margarines.
Some natural fats contain trans fatty acids, but they're not that common and they don't have the same functionality as the ones in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.
Unsaturated oils, like canola and olive oil, are still reasonably good for us, although they don't make very good frying oils and they can't be made into margarine or shortening without modifying their nature, which leads us to methods for fat modification.
Making low-trans shortenings and spreads is more difficult.
The hard fat contains primarily long-chain saturated fatty acids, which when added to liquid oil in the proper proportion give a spread with desirable properties (hardness, spreadability, etc.).
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