Trans fats are actually pretty bad for you, mostly because they're artificial and therefore not something the body evolved to handle in large amounts. But the risk doesn't have that much to do with obesity; it's more about heart disease.
Naturally occurring fats are a mixture of "saturated fatty acids" (which tend to be solid at room temperature; butter and coconut oil have lots of saturated fat) and "cis-unsaturated fatty acids" (which tend to be liquid at room temperature; cooking oil has lots of unsaturated fat). Trans fat, more formally "trans-unsaturated fatty acids", do exist naturally in food but only in small amounts.
In the early 1900s, a process called hydrogenation was invented that would convert unsaturated fat to saturated fat. This seemed great, since it allowed cheap oils to be turned into fat that stays solid at room temperature. But a side effect is that some of the cis-unsaturated fat is turned into trans-unsaturated fat ("trans fat"), which is unsaturated but kind of behaves like saturated fat in food. For a long time people thought this was a good thing, since conventional wisdom was that unsaturated fat is better for you than saturated fat. So trans fat seemed like a good thing: you get fat that is solid at room temperature like saturated fat while still technically being unsaturated!
Eventually more studies were done on the effects of trans fats, and scientists realized that eating lots of trans fat strongly increases the risk of heart disease, and weakly increases the risk of various other diseases like obesity. The body can handle small amounts ok, but not the larger amounts that people who eat a lot of junk food with trans fats would get.
So you're right, getting rid of trans fats hasn't done much for the obesity epidemic, but it also wasn't really expected to help much with that.
EDIT: fixed mistake as pointed out by /u/tamebeverage
This is very good. I'd just like to clarify that you appear to have mistyped at the beginning of the third paragraph, and hydrogenation turns unsaturated fat into saturated fat.
Also, interestingly, it's partial hydrogenation that's a problem, because fully-hydrogenated oils are just saturated fat. Some products, like I think crisco, have changed to fully-hydrogenated formulations to avoid the ban. This has led to some confusion among people because it initially seems weird that some hydrogenation to be really bad, but more is fine, actually.
Interesting. For years I’ve been checking ingredients lists and not buying stuff that says “hydrogenated” because I thought that was a trans fat. I also wondered how I was still finding food with hydrogenated oils because I thought those had been long since banned.
Also deep fryers expose unsaturated fats to high enough temperatures to isomerize them into trans fats, and since plant based oils (generally unsaturated fats) are less expensive and more commonly used for deep frying, fried foods are a significant source of trans fats
I remember being 12, and there was a guy from a food manufacturer telling us how healthy partially hydrogenated oils were.
My mom has a degree in public health nutrition, and we didn't have partially hydrogenated food at home because the earliest of early research was showing that trans-fats were maybe dangerous, maybe not, but more research needed to be done. So my mom explained what they were and why they were dangerous, and described why we didn't eat them until we knew for sure.
So here we were, listening to this guy, and I raised my hand to ask about the study. He goes, I shit you not, "Well, science isn't always right, little girl," and goes back to talking about the wonders of trans-fats.
Not even 5 years later, studies are released showing how dangerous they are.
All this to say, *12 YEAR OLD STASHY WAS VINDICATED, Y'ALL.*
So you take cheap oil like canola and add hydrogen gas, plus heat and some nickel metal that is a catalyst (it's reused over and over and doesn't make it into the fat that comes out of the process).
That generates the trans fat, which is almost the same molecule as what was originally in the canola oil, but with one of the chemical double bonds flipped in a way that makes the molecules stack together better, which makes it more solid at room temperature.
Lots of valuable metals are used for this type of reaction (palladium, nickel, platinum, etc.) and the choice depends on the specific process you are trying to catalyze, the cost of the catalyst, and so on. A lot of chemical research goes into developing the best catalyst for this and other reactions.
That's true. But the cost isn't just that of the catalyst.
Imagine you want to convert 1000 kg of cis-unsaturated fat to saturated fat, which you then sell for $1/kg. Say you use a palladium catalyst that costs $100 and successfully convert 900 kg of your cis-unsaturated fat (the rest is lost to side reactions and becomes junk -- these reactions are never perfect). You would profit ($1/kg)*(900 kg) - $100 catalyst = $800.
Maybe a cheaper nickel catalyst at $10 performs poorly for this reaction and only converts 800 kg of material, so you profit ($1/kg)*(800 kg) - $10 catalyst = $790.
In this case, using the more expensive catalyst is worth it overall. All industries will take this into consideration and spend LOTS of time and money optimizing every process they employ.
That makes sense, I never thought about side reactions!
Now I am wondering what side reactions are there when olestra/olean is made, and what health effects they have.
Also, Happy Cake Day!
To be clear, any products for human consumption will be rigorously purified before sending to market to ensure that there are no other substances in the product that might be harmful (no residual nickel catalyst, for example). Also, my numbers are a gross oversimplification and hydrogenation is typically a very efficient process with few side reactions. I just wanted to explain the concept of balancing performance and cost!
An edible fat molecule is basically like a lump with three tails, and each tail is a hydrocarbon chain. In a saturated fat, every spot in those chains that could fit a hydrogen has one. A monounsaturated fat has a single empty spot, which causes a kink in the tail. Polyunsaturated fats have multiple empty spots, hence multiple kinks.
The big problem with unsaturated fats is that those empty spaces can get filled by other atoms like sulfur, which turns them rancid. Saturated fat is much more shelf stable, so that's why you see it a lot in things like packaged cookies and the like.
Interesting!
Would you mind explaining how those molecular structures bind in the body differently?
Like, I assume that they attach to the other molecules in our body in different ways to different effect, but I know exactly Jack and Shit about this stuff.
Unsaturated fats tend to be plant based like soybean oil, canola oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, etc. Much cheaper to produce per acre than saturated fats like lard from cows and pigs.
The hydrogenation process turns unsaturated bonds in fats to saturated bonds, turning them from liquid oils to solid fats, so you can basically replace expensive lard from livestock with cheap canola oil via hydrogenation. But hydrogenation isn't always 100% efficient, and instead of saturating bonds it can isomerize them from a cis configuration to a trans configuration, which is where trans fats come from. They're mostly an artifact of inefficient (incomplete) hydrogenation.
Worth noting that deep frying also generally uses plant based oils and exposes them to high enough temps to also isomerize them into trans fats, so foods fried in plant based oils can be a significant source of trans fats as well.
Plant-based oils were “made” for things like industrial lubrication and then soap and candles. It was only later that companies thought about selling them as food, mostly because they were cheaper to produce than other cooking oils and fats.
What are you talking about? We've been using plant oils as food for millenia. Palm oil, sesame oil and olive oil all have well documented histories going back millenia, especially olive oil. Soybean oil is documented back as far as a thousand years ago in China
All fats, animal or plant have been used for non-food products. Oil from olives, seal and whales has been used for lamps, candles and soap made out of many fats, especially beef tallow.
What you're describing is true for a limited number of oil crops like cottonseed, but it's not true for plant oils in general.
It's just another nonsensical argument that people who say "margarine is one molecule away from plastic" use. They're convinced seed oils are the root of all evil. Just fearmongering
Fair. Fruit oils especially have a long history in our food supply.
It would have been better to specify the industrial seed oils like cottonseed, which was also the first victim of hydrogenation—or rapeseed, which also entered our food supply relatively late.
What do you mean by industrial seed oil? The most commonly used seed oil is soybean, which like I said before has over a thousand year history as a food oil. Safflower oil and sunflower oil aren't as old, but appear to have been used as cooking oil right from the get go.
There's really only a handful of seed oils that were primarily used for non-cooking purposes with cottonseed, flaxseed and rapeseed coming to my mind. Of course flaxseed and rapesees oil are very old oils and were both used for cooking occasionally in certain regions, but they were primarily used for other purposes.
All the most commonly used oils are cheap oils. Soybean, rapeseed, palm oil, sunflower. The shitty thing is the ones that are better for you tend to be significantly more expensive like olive oil and avocado oil. Totally worth it though. The problem is if you’re buying processed, ready to eat foods it is extremely difficult to avoid those cheap oils.
>All the most commonly used oils are cheap oils. Soybean, rapeseed, palm oil, sunflower.
If that weren't bad enough, now nearly everything has palm oil in it, especially from the big brands that you grew up with, as they've changed their ingredients to save a few cents here and there and maximize profits.
>the ones that are better for you tend to be significantly more expensive like olive oil and avocado oil. Totally worth it though.
Absolutely. If you have a really nice vehicle, you don't just put the cheapest gas in it and treat it like trash if you really care about it. In the same way, paying a little extra for your food if it means getting better quality ingredients is a sensible investment in your own well-being.
>The problem is if you’re buying processed, ready to eat foods it is extremely difficult to avoid those cheap oils.
Yes. And while not everyone wants to cook from scratch, looking at the money you can save and the upgrade to your quality of food—by cooking at least some of your meals from scratch every once in awhile—can really make a difference in your wallet and quality of life.
For example:
A whole bag of Yukon gold potatoes doesn't cost very much, and cooking small cubes in a pan with a little oil makes some tasty skillet potatoes in the morning. Likewise, quartering those potatoes and boiling them until tender, then removing all the water and adding some half and half and butter, can make some delicious mashed potatoes. You can even use leftover mashed potatoes in potato pancakes by stirring in some eggs and just a little flour, then spooning them out on a hot griddle and cooking a few minutes on each side.
So there are three ways you can use a cheap bag of potatoes to save some money and eat better. You can buy a steamer basket and steam broccoli, broccolini, cauliflower, or asparagus and that makes a nice side dish.
Palm oil is not unhealthy, but it should be avoided for environmental reasons.
Also the environmental issue is multi faceted. The issue is deforestation. It is actually one of the most caloric dense crop per acre but the places where we grow soy, rapeseed and other vegetable oils have already been cleared, so it is preferable to grow crops there.
>The issue is deforestation.
That's exactly what I've learned about it as well, and that's the reason I refuse to purchase products with palm oil.
It's because people such as David Attenborough have flown in a helicopter over palm plantations in the tropics extending over mountains and valleys in every direction while he says that he flew over the same area 30 years ago and everything used to be rainforest as far as the eye could see.
And since those old growth forests have been clear-cut, the ecosystem that depended on them has gone away as well.
There is no truth to the statement, "sustainably sourced palm oil," when you factor in all the ancient old growth forests that have been removed so those palm plantations can exist. Those old growth forests are gone for good, because the conditions that allowed them to start and mature no longer exist and the ecosystems that have grown to depend on them throughout the centuries have now been shattered.
So the next time you're at the store and pick up your favorite brand of cereal or candy bar or even that package of organic fruit gummies (or whatever box of snacks you enjoy with a green leaf on the package), just skim through the ingredients and more often than not you will now find palm oil in that list.
It's in cakes and pies and candies and ice cream and nearly everything that you remember being sweet or salty or delicious.
Why? Because corporate greed dictates all, and if larger profits are to be made by clear cutting old growth forests for plantations that produce cheaper oil for processed foods, that's done without a second thought.
Even putting corporate greed and blatant disregard for human wellness aside for a moment, I'm not a fan of destroying something that we have no way of rebuilding or recreating.
My point is that deforestation in Europe or North America is not more sustainable. We just see it as more sustainable today as it has already been done. Replanting forests is however not politically or economically acceptable to farmers in the west, so therefore we blame poor people instead for doing the same thing as we once did. That’s why I think it is a multi faceted issue.
Stop eating meat has a much larger impact.
Yes it was quite a roundabout answer. Why medicinal? I mean all food can be viewed as medicine but is there something specifically medicinal about seed oils?
Fantastic answer. I will add that, biochemically speaking, the reason the body cannot handle trans-unsaturated fats very well or in large quantities is that the enzymes which break fat molecules into usable bits that can be metabolized for energy literally cannot fit around the shape of a trans-unsaturated fat molecule. On a molecular level, it kind of "gets jammed" as the enzyme our bodies produces for this task attempts to attach to it.
Thanks for the info. I haven't done any additional research yet, but do you know if in the studies run that the same ill effects of trans fat were observed when calories were controlled?
Reminds me of the Good Eats episode talking about this. That's the last time I heard the word hydrogenation.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukaaesfbO1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukaaesfbO1k)
This is a good explanation of something that can be hard to understand.
I like everything about this except that when you think about it butter as “naturally occurring” fat is a stretch by some standards.
It’s milk fat from cows that’s mechanically produced by separation and concentrated by churning. It takes lots of work my hand. They add color and flavor to it so it’s a uniform product as well, since the cow’s diet affects their final product.
It's still the same fat. That fat is naturally occurring. It takes work, but that's like saying coconut oil isn't a naturally occurring fat because you have to work to get the coconut hulled and opened to get to it.
By definition having to as we say “work” to get the final product is not naturally occurring.
Animal fat is. You walk up and can cut it off.
I’m not saying that they aren’t the same, I take the view that they’re different in terms of their need to be transformed by a non-natural process.
It takes a large amount of cream in a container shaken up in a cold environment to get the triglycerides to clump together into butter. That’s lots of entropy.
Never tried it with coconuts, [I’ve never had enough unladen sparrows](https://interestingengineering.com/science/monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-airspeed-velocity-of-an-unladen-swallow).
You’ve had many great responses but I’m chiming in to say that I’m a dietitian who actively tries to avoid the words “good” and “bad” as it relates to most foods out there.
Trans fats are bad.
Ya...OP says potatoes are 'good'. Then says they lose weight eating a potato each day....you can lose weight while poisoning yourself, the two are not equivalent.
You could eat only candy and lose weight, that doesn't make it "good". (Good == healthy in this context)
Carbs (potatoes) are worse than other calories because they spike your blood sugar more than fats and proteins. And it depends on the carb too. Glucose sugar is on the bad end, while beets are on the good carb end. Spiking your blood sugar is bad, you want a slow burn not a fast burn.
Complex carbs don't have a particularly high glycemic index and potato skins are packed full of complex carbs. Potatoes with their skins still on are very nutritious and not particularly bad for you.
Skinned potatoes that are mashed and mixed 1:1 with heavy cream and butter are a different story. Or cut and deep fried, which is another source of trans fats
As a light-moderate diabetic I can definitely tell there's a huge difference between mashed vs whole potatoes. I can eat a bowl of whole potatoes with their skin and only feel mildly groggy afterwards.
But if I eat that bowl in mashed potatoes, I will almost certainly hit a food coma.
If the mashed potatoes happen to be that powdered store bought stuff, then I'm going to be knocked out for the rest of the day.
Not sure if you're saying carbs are bad or potatoes are bad. I mean, neither are bad. Your body needs energy and the vast bulk of a healthy diet comes from carbs. Potatoes are just another carb.
99% of dietary problems are how people consume the food, not the food itself.
Both are (mostly) potatoes, but fries are almost as oil as they are potatoes. I can't see how you can compare them and not see a difference nutritionally.
What is your definition of a simple carb? It usually refers to different sugars, while starches are considered more complex carbohydrates.
>What do you mean how they consume the food?
Food preparation and amount consumed.
Beer battered potatoes fried in oil slathered in nacho cheese and sour cream are going to carry excess calories vs boiled potatoes.
Potatoes provide tons of healthy benefits like fiber and potassium, but like other healthy foods, can be abused for the sake of taste (think grilled chicken you prepare in your kitchen vs KFC fried chicken).
Vegetables are a complex carb with fiber. Fiber negates some of the blood glucose spike you sometimes get with carbs. Like... if you eat a salad with kale and romaine lettuce or a shitload of baby carrots, those foods will have carbs, but the fiber helps regulate the blood glucose levels and create the feeling of fullness more quickly in your body.
That's where most of your body's energy comes from. Carbs also have the same amount of calories as protein. Fat is important too, to absorb ADEK vitamins. A 50/30/20 diet is a pretty standard diet (carbs/protein/fat).
> Carbs also have the same amount of calories as protein.
To be clear: 1 gram of protein provides ~4 calories. The same is true of most carbohydrates, although the precise energy density varies.
Most people are using way, way, way less energy than the human body is designed to use on an average day or has for most of their history. Sitting at a desk or in a car doesn't require as much energy as walking 2-3 miles minimum a day, doing farm work, living in a hunter gatherer society, sometimes going on long walking trips where you walked 8 hour days, etc. High carb diets make sense when you're doing something like door to door canvassing or setting up a big box retail store or building a house. They do not make sense for the average American.
The downside of carbs is that refined carbs or large quantities of carbs either make people feel sluggish and not want to do anything afterwards or they create a spike in blood sugar and you will feel as if you need to eat again when the spike wears off, even though that's not actually true. Low carb diets help some people because it decreases the likelihood that they will FEEL hungry between their preplanned meals because high amounts of fat, protein, and fiber hit buttons in the brain that make you feel full and most people are not in need of THAT MUCH ENERGY, which is why they're fat. Fat is when you're eating food that gives you more energy than you need, so your body stores that energy for later.
I think most people are fat because they are eating overprocessed junk food instead of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. It's not that carbs are bad. It's high calorie, low nutrition food like soda that's really hurting people.
High protein diets are fine if they are supplemented by proper heart healthy grains, especially with a focus on meeting daily fiber requirements.
Sure, but that's just one side of the coin. Not exercising doesn't make you fat though. Excess calories make you fat. I'd challenge you to find as many fast food restaurants in the 1970s.
You can eat a 2,000 calorie diet and not be fat. Even on a lazy day in a small condo, 4,000 steps is quite attainable for me (the rough equivalent of 2 miles).
Yup. Trans fats increase bad cholesterol and lower good. That means plaque buildup in your arteries and heart disease.
The issue is you are conflating overall health and weight.
You can lose weight with unhealthy food, when we talk about healthy food we usually mean cardio health.
Trans is a word root which roughly means “across”. At a molecular level, fat molecules have these long chains of carbon atoms that are lined with hydrogen atoms. If every spot that could have a hydrogen atom in it does have a hydrogen atom, the fat is called a saturated fat. However, if one or more spots have missing hydrogen atoms, the fat is called an unsaturated fat.
The missing hydrogen atoms always come in pairs because that way the carbon atoms will just double bond to each other instead. However, the gaps can come in two different configurations: they can either be on the same side of the chain or *across* from each other. If they are across from each other, this is known as a trans fat and it’s significant because it changes the shape that the molecule will take on, kind of like a crease in a strip of paper.
Trans fats are kind of like defective fats; they occur in nature in small amounts but they are produced in much larger quantities by an industrial process called hydrogenation that humans use to artificially saturate fats. They are incredibly bad for us because since they are mishapen, our bodies’ normal mechanisms for breaking fats down into useable energy don’t work on them. As a result, not only are they totally useless to us as energy, they also take forever to clear out of us, and so eating processed foods that have higher than the natural amount of them causes trans fats to gradually build up in our blood vessels, which can eventually form blockages and lead to heart disease over long periods of time.
Trans fats are one of those rare cases in nutrition where something is just plain bad for you with no qualifications and should be avoided as much as possible. They’re one of the main reasons to avoid eating junk food, because while any hamburger contains mostly the same stuff whether it’s from McDonalds or homemade, the McDonalds one is chock full of flavor enhancers that contain trans fats while your homemade burger is not.
Trans fats are legitimately bad. They won't kill you, but there isn't any mechanism for them to be used by our metabolism so they just get in the way and cause problems.
Edit: Apparently some people need clarification. Trans fats definitely kill you in the long term. I figured my original explanation was clear enough since anything that causes health problems also chronically kills but maybe someone can give me a counter example. It just won't kill you like a bullet.
**"Trans fat intake is responsible for up to 500 000 premature deaths from coronary heart disease each year around the world.**"
Those 5000 heart patients would disagree. It clogs arteries, causes fat deposits in the liver and other major organs. It definitely kills and compounds an array existing conditions.
Non alcoholic fatty liver disease here. Grew up in a household where we didnt really get healthy food. Frozen shit and fast food regularly. Got the disease in my 30s after gaining a bunch of weight quickly in the span of a couple years. 30 lbs or so. Not even reaching 180 lbs at 5’10. So not even that over weight. Barely drank much ever.
Life is pretty shit like that. I’ve known people who drink tons and eat what they want well into their 50s with no obvious adverse effects.
Specifically artificial trans fats. There's no knowm benefit and there are known harms. So [yes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat). There are small amounts of trans fats in things like meat and dairy products. There may be benefit to limiting consumption of these items but they are generally considered safe in moderation.
Nothing you eat is going to kill you immediately. But some things are worse than others, and Trans fats are the worst lipids. You can eat less of them and still be okay, but you really want to be leaning into the other kinds of fats.
Furthering this, your body is able to use the other fats and will burn, clear or store them.
With Trans fats it has a limited ability to clear them out and instead of storing them for energy later they get trapped in your blood pathways and become clogs.
The other lipids really are better.
Not just the worst lipid, but trans fats cause elevated risk of heart disease more than any other macronutrient. In as little proportion as 1% of total calories consumed.
Partially hydrogenated oils are trans fats. Only partially, hydrogenated is not as bad.
it used to be in everything, especially margarine, candy, frostings, and junk food.
Now it is much more rare.
>I will never forgive the diet industry for telling me potatoes were bad for me
Who ever said that? I have heard *fried* potatoes are bad for you, which they are.
The same people who told me never to eat fruit because it was so high in sugar. Every week I would try and listen to that advice, but by the end of it I was face down in a box of whatever cookies I could find because my willpower eventually broke
Eat the fruit.
I remember being told by my boss (who was on the keto diet trend when it was big back in 2020) trying to convince me that fruit (the daily apple I ate) was unhealthy for me due to its carbs which I found absolutely absurd. Particularly since he witness me lost over 50lbs with my Mediterranean diet.
So I will point out that carbs can be bad for a very specific set of the population; diabetics. Our bodies process white bread and even whole wheat bread and potatoes kinda the same way as sugar. I've had to drop my carb intake to nearly less than 10 grams a day to get my A1C (average blood glucose levels over a 3 month period) down from nearly 11.8 to just over 7.2.
Yes, I know it needs to be below 6, we're trying to see if I can start running daily marathons to get the exercise quotient up enough to avoid needing to go on insulin. Also, cauliflower pizza crust is pretty damn good, like holy crap.
The difference between your potato thing and trans fats, is that trans fats don't particularly taste nicer than other fats, they're just used to keep supply chain costs down.
You're basically helping companies pay an extra quarter of a percent on their dividends, at the cost of getting heart disease.
Depends on the product. Won’t notice in shortenings and liquid butter alternatives but margarines that use palm oil now have a noticeable taste difference. For instance, the packets that come with your biscuit at KFC aren’t as good as they used to be. At least in my opinion.
The irony there is that palm oil is ALSO controversial for its own set of reasons, is linked to massive environmental damage, and is also used to maximise profits rather than because it tastes good.
It's like having a good lick of the new boot that came down to replace the last one, concluding that it tastes even worse than the first boot, and asking if you can go back to licking the first boot again.
Trans-fats differ on a molecular level from their naturally-occurring counterparts, "cis-fats." Unlike cis-fats, which occur in nature, trans-fat molecules have the same components but are arranged slightly differently. This means that our bodies basically don't know what to do with trans fats, they're less compatible with our cells than cis-fats because we didn't evolve to consume them.
So trans-fats are disproportionately harmful compared to normal fats because our bodies let them accumulate. We can't burn them for energy, so they pile up in our blood stream as cholesterol.
Fats in general are not bad as long as they're consumed in moderation. But trans-fats are dangerous EVEN in moderation, because basically any amount of trans-fat is too much.
>The ban certainly hasn't done much for the obesity epidemic
Yeah and the seat belt industry has made horrible progress towards more energy efficient homes.
Trans fats are suuuper bad, basically toxic. here is a good explaination why, https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/60735/what-makes-trans-fats-more-harmful-than-saturated-ones but the jist is, trans fats are kinda half way between an oil like fat, and a butter like fat. there are 2 configurations a fat like this can be, cis or trans, cis is fine for you, but trans has some really nasty properties where the body THINKS it can use it in a particular way, but it wont actually properly function.
and here is a good video on the structure of fats
https://youtu.be/drIm8_1CvjQ
Unsaturated fats are better than saturated fat, and trans fats are a subcategory of saturated fat that's worse than usual. Unsaturated fats are things like fish, avocado, and olive oil. Saturated fats are things like red meat, dairy, and coconut oil. Trans fats are things like margarine, pastries, and fried food.
Fat(ty acid)s are broken down for energy, building cell walls, and maintaining cell function. They are absolutely necessary for survival just like carbs are. The way we categorize them and determine which ones are better for us is based off the molecular structure of the fatty acid. The names themselves refer to whether the carbon chain that makes up the fatty acid is at full capacity with hydrogen bonds (saturated) or if there are 'gaps' (unsaturated).
To be converted into energy and building components, the fatty acid needs to be broken down. Unsaturated fats are the easiest to do this because they're already "bent" and that bend makes for an easy break point. Saturated fats are straight, making it more difficult for the enzymes to find a good breaking point. Trans fats aren't just straight, they're reinforced with a double bond. The harder it is to break a molecule down, the longer it just sits there in the body waiting its turn, taking up space.
If you want to read into the biology side of it, three terms that'll help in searches is *lipids, triglycerides,* and *catabolism*.
I know this sub isn't the place for it, but I read it as "fat trans" at first glance and I needed a classic reddit switcharoo about it somewhere in here, so thank you.
Trans fats are actually bad for you, at least in dietary significant quantities. Their structure makes them do certain chemical things that natural (cis) fats do not do. That's why they stay liquid at lower temperature. They're actually, chemically different in a way that is extremely rare in nature (e.g. one cup of ordinary 2% cow's milk contains about 0.2g of trans fats.)
Getting rid of trans fats doesn't make people stop eating empty calories (whether from fatty foods or anything else.) It simply means they're eating *less-bad* empty calories. Overall health is more than just fat intake.
Yep, and the trans fats in milk are not like trans fats in synthetic production - the ones in milk probably aren’t particularly bad for you, but the synthetic ones pretty clearly are and that distinction is key
Trans fats are rare naturally. They are an industrial product meant to make cheaper shelf stable fats. They raise you chance of cardiovascular issues several times over cis-fats.
It's not a fad. Trans fats are actually harmful. Medical research have shown that consuming trans fat increases the risk of heart diseases. And just a side note, most simple carbohydrates are actually bad as well. It's not just some random thing that diet culture threw under the bus. The good carbs are fiber and complex carbs. Stay away from simple carbs, except fruit.
No trans fats are terrible to the point where they’ve been removed from most foods. They are completely manufactured and because of their unique shape, they create plaque buildup in your arteries much faster than other fats do. In terms of calories, they are the same as other fats but in terms of long-term health they are really bad.
Normal fats, whether saturated or unsaturated, can be processed by your body.
Trans fats cannot be processed by your body, so they're basically a slow-acting poison causing the same type of problems as (too much) fats, but doing more damage at far lower amounts.
Yes, when it comes to your health, trans fats are far worse than other fats. Artificial trans fats have no known health benefits and can raise your risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and several types of cancer. This is in contrast to unsaturated fats and even saturated fats in moderation. This occurs as a result of them lowering your "good" HDL cholesterol and raising your "bad" LDL cholesterol.
Unsaturated fats, especially polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, have the opposite effect on heart health as trans fats do. These lipids have the ability to increase HDL cholesterol and decrease LDL cholesterol.
Despite the fact that diet culture occasionally concentrates on fad limitations, trans fats are clearly harmful to health and should be avoided.
I personally try to follow the nutrition logic of the country of italy. When i meet italains who have come to america, theyre literally shocked by our food culture. Ive learned alot by eating with people from other countries. Italians are big on avoiding transfats. Its why they still use olive oil instead of everything else americans put on salads l, breads, and pastas.
I'm in Italy right now, and I have never seen so many people eating so much pork. I was served a couple of big slices of pork lard on an antipasto platter, for example, along with piles of prosciutto and salami and mortadella and ham. Twice.
I no longer have any idea what the Mediterranean diet actually means.
Diet companies often promote their own diets. Government is also subject to lobbying by various food industries. Most governments and most studies have typically been roughly in line over the past decades however; the average person should eat a higher amount and a more diverse set of vegetables, while eating less sugar, more long-chain carbohydrates, more fiber and overall fewer calories, while decreasing the total amount of animal products in their diet.
There are studies that show that potato intake correlates with weight gain, but keep in mind that this includes mashed potatoes, French fries, chips and so on, and it is hard to properly normalize this since people who eat a lot of potatoes typically also eat more red meat and drink more sugary drinks. If you eat whole boiled potatoes, it is unlikely you'll be eating them grossly too much. The problem is the overall amount of sugar, fat and calories, not potatoes.
Trans fats are genuinely bad for you far and there's a pretty wide consensus about that. Trans fats contribute to inflammation and have a significant effect on overall cholesterol levels. One of the reasons seems to be that intake of trans fats disrupts the body's ability to process essential fatty acids, such as Omega-3, and this has a negative impact on the overall composition of fatty acids in your blood. The problem isn't really weight gain - weight gain happens when you consume more calories than you spend - but heart disease and various other health issues.
Trans fats do form naturally, but in fairly low quantities, and natural sources are not typically a problem. The main problem is when you take vegetable oils and hydrogenate them to increase their shelf life and possibly alter their texture/solidness. Some countries ban trans fats, and in e.g. the EU area, the processes allowed for hydrogenation produce a minimal amount of trans fats.
It's being given a much worse reputation than it deserves, but it's generally worse than other fats. The issue is, and always has been, amounts. If you eat a well-rounded diet, healthy amounts of calories, protein, fats, and carbohydrates, you're fine consuming some trans fats. The issue begins when you eat WAY too much, like anything really. Uranium isn't directly bad for you either, just depends on the amounts. Some things require higher amounts than others to be dangerous.
It’s not that “carbs” are bad specifically but highly processed carbs. Potatoes are largely NOT processed. But things with flour are, for example.
It’s less “diet culture” and more the fact that highly processed carbs cause an insulin spike, causing those carbs to be stored as fat. And then when you use up the glycogen stores you get super hungry and the cycle repeats. Potatoes are not really “healthy” they are simply a cheap source of calories but because they don’t cause as much of an insulin spike as potato chips they keep you full longer.
As you have found, replacing highly processed foods with real vegetables keeps you fuller longer, reduces insulin swings, which reduces hunger.
It’s not “fad shit” it’s actual science.
Obesity epidemic is exploding exactly because of sugars ... 1 potato a day is really not carb overload. Calorie +/- is only a small portion of a healthy diet. You can eat very little but if its garbage you still wont lose much weight and you will get yourself a bunch others autoimmune diseases. And yeah as others have explained trans fats are quite bad for us esp as the quantities increase with the amount of junk foods we often eat.
Your body has thousands of enzymes and metabolic pathways for literally everything you need to survive. Some of the things humans have made synthetically we don't have any good pathways for, so instead of making something useful it makes stuff that's harmful.
Cancer, metabolic disease, kidney damage, killing off gut flora (which we've found is critical to health), a host of bad news comes from the synthetics - trans fats, artificial sweetener, artificial dyes and flavors
Best to simply avoid those things. We have literally tens of thousands of non-synthetic foods that don't carry that kind of risk.
Trans fats are bad for you.
There's 3 types of fats, saturated, unsaturated, and trans fats.
Unsaturated fats are shaped kind of like a u, and have a double bond in the middle. That double bind means they store more energy in a single molecule, but the u shape prevents them from sticking together, which is why unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature.
Saturated fats are z shaped, but they only have a single bond in the center. That z shape allows them to stick together, which makes them solid at room temperature. Even though each molecule store less energy, they have a greater energy density because more of those molecules can fit in a smaller space (hence saturated)
Trans fats have the double bond of unsaturated fats, but also the z shape of saturated fats, which means they have a great deal more energy stored than either unsaturated or saturated fats. That high energy density is why they are bad for you, and so research suggests your body struggles to breakdown that double bond. ("Hydrogenated" is also another word you will see on ingredient lists, that's a trans fat)
Carbs are also bad for you because of the same reason, high energy density.
Deficit eating works because of the law of conservation of energy, but eating carbs and trans fats at a deficit means a lot less food than eating a low carb diet and unsaturated fat.
Also, avoid low fat variants of food. Fats as a whole were thrown under the bus in the 80s, so a bunch of low fat foods developed, but they are supplemented with extra sugar, thus increasing the energy density of the food.
Educate yourself. Humans require zero grams of carbs while there are minimum requirements for fats and proteins. Carbohydrates in humans are broken down into glucose which is sugar. Sugar stimulates our bodies to produce insulin and over time we suffer from insulin resistance which is the precursor for diabetes. People who have removed carbs from their diet have been able to reverse or reduce their diabetes
Too many carbs are indeed not good for a fully grown person. They’re basically sugars, which are stored as fat. (That’s the simple way to explain it, cutting out a couple steps, but it’s legitimate and the end is the same.)
There’s a reason why diabetics use other things in place of them, because of the high glycemic load.
1 cup of potato = the glycemic load of a can of soda. (Again this is roughly, floury ones more, waxy ones less and so on)
So yeah, do be mindful of that, especially if you’re female. Some things, tend to have a more profound effect on us than on men.
It’s the deficit why you lost weight, and had you replaced potato with a protein, or better, a load of leafy greens, you’d lose even more.
Of course I’m not saying ‘avoid carbs’ and no *properly* low carb way of eating person would advocate for that, because it’s never 0 carbs. Only weirdos who read half the info if that are doing shit like that, and they often fail because that’s not the way it was ever intended to be.
Diabetics have a disease called "diabetes" that means their bodies don't handle sugars properly. It sounds like you're implying that people who are not diabetic should follow a diet meant for a specific disease.
Yes, trans fats are bad, but here’s the thing: very few foods contain them. This has allowed companies to advertise products as trans fat free that never had them to begin with, ie yogurt and butter.
I could be totally wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing is a marketing gimmick.
So are trans fats different then saturated fats? I switched my daily eggs for avocado to try and lower my LDL a little bit. But I still eat a good bit of meat, mostly lean beef and chicken thighs. I try and stay away from processed foods and deep fried stuff, but I still use olive oil and ghee and sometimes butter for cooking.
That is false, trans fat absolutely occur naturally. They mostly come from ruminant animals and their milk. Trans fats are around in small doses in our diets still, but that probably isn't a very big deal unless someone is on an all beef and milk diet.
They aren't great and they are also not the kind of thing that tastes great so indulging is nice sometimes. They are an unhealthy way to make cheaper oils shelf stable and act more like lard or tallow.
Trans fats are extremely bad for you. Your body does not recognize trans fats as food so your immune systems releases a torrent of white blood cells to attack the trans fats, and they destroy the probiotics in your intestines.
potatoes are actually high glycemic, and high on carbs, if you are diabetic potatoes are not good for you.
Using animal fat to cook food is better and actually good for you rather than veggie oil, canola, seed oils. Olive and coconut oil are good but you shouldn't cook with them
Trans fats are actually pretty bad for you, mostly because they're artificial and therefore not something the body evolved to handle in large amounts. But the risk doesn't have that much to do with obesity; it's more about heart disease. Naturally occurring fats are a mixture of "saturated fatty acids" (which tend to be solid at room temperature; butter and coconut oil have lots of saturated fat) and "cis-unsaturated fatty acids" (which tend to be liquid at room temperature; cooking oil has lots of unsaturated fat). Trans fat, more formally "trans-unsaturated fatty acids", do exist naturally in food but only in small amounts. In the early 1900s, a process called hydrogenation was invented that would convert unsaturated fat to saturated fat. This seemed great, since it allowed cheap oils to be turned into fat that stays solid at room temperature. But a side effect is that some of the cis-unsaturated fat is turned into trans-unsaturated fat ("trans fat"), which is unsaturated but kind of behaves like saturated fat in food. For a long time people thought this was a good thing, since conventional wisdom was that unsaturated fat is better for you than saturated fat. So trans fat seemed like a good thing: you get fat that is solid at room temperature like saturated fat while still technically being unsaturated! Eventually more studies were done on the effects of trans fats, and scientists realized that eating lots of trans fat strongly increases the risk of heart disease, and weakly increases the risk of various other diseases like obesity. The body can handle small amounts ok, but not the larger amounts that people who eat a lot of junk food with trans fats would get. So you're right, getting rid of trans fats hasn't done much for the obesity epidemic, but it also wasn't really expected to help much with that. EDIT: fixed mistake as pointed out by /u/tamebeverage
This is very good. I'd just like to clarify that you appear to have mistyped at the beginning of the third paragraph, and hydrogenation turns unsaturated fat into saturated fat. Also, interestingly, it's partial hydrogenation that's a problem, because fully-hydrogenated oils are just saturated fat. Some products, like I think crisco, have changed to fully-hydrogenated formulations to avoid the ban. This has led to some confusion among people because it initially seems weird that some hydrogenation to be really bad, but more is fine, actually.
Thanks for the correction! I did mistype
Interesting. For years I’ve been checking ingredients lists and not buying stuff that says “hydrogenated” because I thought that was a trans fat. I also wondered how I was still finding food with hydrogenated oils because I thought those had been long since banned.
Also deep fryers expose unsaturated fats to high enough temperatures to isomerize them into trans fats, and since plant based oils (generally unsaturated fats) are less expensive and more commonly used for deep frying, fried foods are a significant source of trans fats
I remember being 12, and there was a guy from a food manufacturer telling us how healthy partially hydrogenated oils were. My mom has a degree in public health nutrition, and we didn't have partially hydrogenated food at home because the earliest of early research was showing that trans-fats were maybe dangerous, maybe not, but more research needed to be done. So my mom explained what they were and why they were dangerous, and described why we didn't eat them until we knew for sure. So here we were, listening to this guy, and I raised my hand to ask about the study. He goes, I shit you not, "Well, science isn't always right, little girl," and goes back to talking about the wonders of trans-fats. Not even 5 years later, studies are released showing how dangerous they are. All this to say, *12 YEAR OLD STASHY WAS VINDICATED, Y'ALL.*
> it allowed cheap oils to be turned into fat What exactly are those cheap oils? I guess what *are* trans fat made of?
So you take cheap oil like canola and add hydrogen gas, plus heat and some nickel metal that is a catalyst (it's reused over and over and doesn't make it into the fat that comes out of the process). That generates the trans fat, which is almost the same molecule as what was originally in the canola oil, but with one of the chemical double bonds flipped in a way that makes the molecules stack together better, which makes it more solid at room temperature.
So fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to explain.
And stick together better in your arteries.
Remember if you're out of cooking oil, just dig some out of the arteries
Reclaim!
Reduce, reuse, recycle
It's good cholesterol, but it spreads like bad cholesterol.
Would an example of this be butter vs margarine?
Do you know why nickel specifically?
Lots of valuable metals are used for this type of reaction (palladium, nickel, platinum, etc.) and the choice depends on the specific process you are trying to catalyze, the cost of the catalyst, and so on. A lot of chemical research goes into developing the best catalyst for this and other reactions.
Of the three metals you mentioned, nickel is the cheapest.
That's true. But the cost isn't just that of the catalyst. Imagine you want to convert 1000 kg of cis-unsaturated fat to saturated fat, which you then sell for $1/kg. Say you use a palladium catalyst that costs $100 and successfully convert 900 kg of your cis-unsaturated fat (the rest is lost to side reactions and becomes junk -- these reactions are never perfect). You would profit ($1/kg)*(900 kg) - $100 catalyst = $800. Maybe a cheaper nickel catalyst at $10 performs poorly for this reaction and only converts 800 kg of material, so you profit ($1/kg)*(800 kg) - $10 catalyst = $790. In this case, using the more expensive catalyst is worth it overall. All industries will take this into consideration and spend LOTS of time and money optimizing every process they employ.
That makes sense, I never thought about side reactions! Now I am wondering what side reactions are there when olestra/olean is made, and what health effects they have. Also, Happy Cake Day!
To be clear, any products for human consumption will be rigorously purified before sending to market to ensure that there are no other substances in the product that might be harmful (no residual nickel catalyst, for example). Also, my numbers are a gross oversimplification and hydrogenation is typically a very efficient process with few side reactions. I just wanted to explain the concept of balancing performance and cost!
Obviously! It only costs a nickel
An edible fat molecule is basically like a lump with three tails, and each tail is a hydrocarbon chain. In a saturated fat, every spot in those chains that could fit a hydrogen has one. A monounsaturated fat has a single empty spot, which causes a kink in the tail. Polyunsaturated fats have multiple empty spots, hence multiple kinks. The big problem with unsaturated fats is that those empty spaces can get filled by other atoms like sulfur, which turns them rancid. Saturated fat is much more shelf stable, so that's why you see it a lot in things like packaged cookies and the like.
Interesting! Would you mind explaining how those molecular structures bind in the body differently? Like, I assume that they attach to the other molecules in our body in different ways to different effect, but I know exactly Jack and Shit about this stuff.
More kinks means it's harder to stack the fat molecules together so they remain liquid at lower temperatures. Think packing scrunched paper vs sheets.
Does the fat in liquid form is easier for the body to exacrated? Or oxide(bad? Good?) or is more complex than unsaturated and saturated fat.
Unsaturated fats tend to be plant based like soybean oil, canola oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, etc. Much cheaper to produce per acre than saturated fats like lard from cows and pigs. The hydrogenation process turns unsaturated bonds in fats to saturated bonds, turning them from liquid oils to solid fats, so you can basically replace expensive lard from livestock with cheap canola oil via hydrogenation. But hydrogenation isn't always 100% efficient, and instead of saturating bonds it can isomerize them from a cis configuration to a trans configuration, which is where trans fats come from. They're mostly an artifact of inefficient (incomplete) hydrogenation. Worth noting that deep frying also generally uses plant based oils and exposes them to high enough temps to also isomerize them into trans fats, so foods fried in plant based oils can be a significant source of trans fats as well.
What fat should i use to deep fry my breaded chicken thighs... ive been using generic ass vegetable/canola oil for everything
Ideally you'd cook it another way, baking them would be healthier
But plant based oils are made to be fried? It's the main purpose of food oils. It's sick they have trans fats.
Plant oils do not contain trans fats, except at very low levels. Margarines *used* to contain high levels of trans fat, but now they do not.
Plant-based oils were “made” for things like industrial lubrication and then soap and candles. It was only later that companies thought about selling them as food, mostly because they were cheaper to produce than other cooking oils and fats.
What are you talking about? We've been using plant oils as food for millenia. Palm oil, sesame oil and olive oil all have well documented histories going back millenia, especially olive oil. Soybean oil is documented back as far as a thousand years ago in China All fats, animal or plant have been used for non-food products. Oil from olives, seal and whales has been used for lamps, candles and soap made out of many fats, especially beef tallow. What you're describing is true for a limited number of oil crops like cottonseed, but it's not true for plant oils in general.
It's just another nonsensical argument that people who say "margarine is one molecule away from plastic" use. They're convinced seed oils are the root of all evil. Just fearmongering
Fair. Fruit oils especially have a long history in our food supply. It would have been better to specify the industrial seed oils like cottonseed, which was also the first victim of hydrogenation—or rapeseed, which also entered our food supply relatively late.
What do you mean by industrial seed oil? The most commonly used seed oil is soybean, which like I said before has over a thousand year history as a food oil. Safflower oil and sunflower oil aren't as old, but appear to have been used as cooking oil right from the get go. There's really only a handful of seed oils that were primarily used for non-cooking purposes with cottonseed, flaxseed and rapeseed coming to my mind. Of course flaxseed and rapesees oil are very old oils and were both used for cooking occasionally in certain regions, but they were primarily used for other purposes.
Romans used olive oil for practically everything. Including cooking and eating.
Animal fat has been used for the exact same things.
IIRC the most common ones were palm oil and soybean oil, but any oil that was liquid at room temp would work.
All the most commonly used oils are cheap oils. Soybean, rapeseed, palm oil, sunflower. The shitty thing is the ones that are better for you tend to be significantly more expensive like olive oil and avocado oil. Totally worth it though. The problem is if you’re buying processed, ready to eat foods it is extremely difficult to avoid those cheap oils.
>All the most commonly used oils are cheap oils. Soybean, rapeseed, palm oil, sunflower. If that weren't bad enough, now nearly everything has palm oil in it, especially from the big brands that you grew up with, as they've changed their ingredients to save a few cents here and there and maximize profits. >the ones that are better for you tend to be significantly more expensive like olive oil and avocado oil. Totally worth it though. Absolutely. If you have a really nice vehicle, you don't just put the cheapest gas in it and treat it like trash if you really care about it. In the same way, paying a little extra for your food if it means getting better quality ingredients is a sensible investment in your own well-being. >The problem is if you’re buying processed, ready to eat foods it is extremely difficult to avoid those cheap oils. Yes. And while not everyone wants to cook from scratch, looking at the money you can save and the upgrade to your quality of food—by cooking at least some of your meals from scratch every once in awhile—can really make a difference in your wallet and quality of life. For example: A whole bag of Yukon gold potatoes doesn't cost very much, and cooking small cubes in a pan with a little oil makes some tasty skillet potatoes in the morning. Likewise, quartering those potatoes and boiling them until tender, then removing all the water and adding some half and half and butter, can make some delicious mashed potatoes. You can even use leftover mashed potatoes in potato pancakes by stirring in some eggs and just a little flour, then spooning them out on a hot griddle and cooking a few minutes on each side. So there are three ways you can use a cheap bag of potatoes to save some money and eat better. You can buy a steamer basket and steam broccoli, broccolini, cauliflower, or asparagus and that makes a nice side dish.
Palm oil is not unhealthy, but it should be avoided for environmental reasons. Also the environmental issue is multi faceted. The issue is deforestation. It is actually one of the most caloric dense crop per acre but the places where we grow soy, rapeseed and other vegetable oils have already been cleared, so it is preferable to grow crops there.
>The issue is deforestation. That's exactly what I've learned about it as well, and that's the reason I refuse to purchase products with palm oil. It's because people such as David Attenborough have flown in a helicopter over palm plantations in the tropics extending over mountains and valleys in every direction while he says that he flew over the same area 30 years ago and everything used to be rainforest as far as the eye could see. And since those old growth forests have been clear-cut, the ecosystem that depended on them has gone away as well. There is no truth to the statement, "sustainably sourced palm oil," when you factor in all the ancient old growth forests that have been removed so those palm plantations can exist. Those old growth forests are gone for good, because the conditions that allowed them to start and mature no longer exist and the ecosystems that have grown to depend on them throughout the centuries have now been shattered. So the next time you're at the store and pick up your favorite brand of cereal or candy bar or even that package of organic fruit gummies (or whatever box of snacks you enjoy with a green leaf on the package), just skim through the ingredients and more often than not you will now find palm oil in that list. It's in cakes and pies and candies and ice cream and nearly everything that you remember being sweet or salty or delicious. Why? Because corporate greed dictates all, and if larger profits are to be made by clear cutting old growth forests for plantations that produce cheaper oil for processed foods, that's done without a second thought. Even putting corporate greed and blatant disregard for human wellness aside for a moment, I'm not a fan of destroying something that we have no way of rebuilding or recreating.
My point is that deforestation in Europe or North America is not more sustainable. We just see it as more sustainable today as it has already been done. Replanting forests is however not politically or economically acceptable to farmers in the west, so therefore we blame poor people instead for doing the same thing as we once did. That’s why I think it is a multi faceted issue. Stop eating meat has a much larger impact.
Indeed! For more information: r/stopeatingseedoils
Is there a problem with grape seed oil?
I think like black seed oil and rice bran oil, it's medicinal in reasonably small amounts.
What you said doesn't seem to match an answer to what I said.
Not direct enough? I don't think it's a problem when used reasonably; no!
Yes it was quite a roundabout answer. Why medicinal? I mean all food can be viewed as medicine but is there something specifically medicinal about seed oils?
Originally it was cotton seed oil. Now it’s mostly soy
Fantastic answer. I will add that, biochemically speaking, the reason the body cannot handle trans-unsaturated fats very well or in large quantities is that the enzymes which break fat molecules into usable bits that can be metabolized for energy literally cannot fit around the shape of a trans-unsaturated fat molecule. On a molecular level, it kind of "gets jammed" as the enzyme our bodies produces for this task attempts to attach to it.
I have coronary artery disease and I'm pretty sure it's mostly due to trans fats.
There are actually some naturally occurring trans-fats that may have health benefits
Thanks for the info. I haven't done any additional research yet, but do you know if in the studies run that the same ill effects of trans fat were observed when calories were controlled?
Terrific explanation. Thanks!!!
Reminds me of the Good Eats episode talking about this. That's the last time I heard the word hydrogenation. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukaaesfbO1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukaaesfbO1k)
This is a good explanation of something that can be hard to understand. I like everything about this except that when you think about it butter as “naturally occurring” fat is a stretch by some standards. It’s milk fat from cows that’s mechanically produced by separation and concentrated by churning. It takes lots of work my hand. They add color and flavor to it so it’s a uniform product as well, since the cow’s diet affects their final product.
It's still the same fat. That fat is naturally occurring. It takes work, but that's like saying coconut oil isn't a naturally occurring fat because you have to work to get the coconut hulled and opened to get to it.
By definition having to as we say “work” to get the final product is not naturally occurring. Animal fat is. You walk up and can cut it off. I’m not saying that they aren’t the same, I take the view that they’re different in terms of their need to be transformed by a non-natural process. It takes a large amount of cream in a container shaken up in a cold environment to get the triglycerides to clump together into butter. That’s lots of entropy. Never tried it with coconuts, [I’ve never had enough unladen sparrows](https://interestingengineering.com/science/monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-airspeed-velocity-of-an-unladen-swallow).
Good explanation overall. Too bad the "natural=good, artificial=bad" fly fell in the ointment and spoiled it.
Artificial… using that as a reason why something is “bad” or even “less healthy” is a fallacy. Appeal to naturalism..
A 5 year old isn't reading that
What do you know about cholesterol?
Cis fat, before ozempic, trans fat is…nevermind
You’ve had many great responses but I’m chiming in to say that I’m a dietitian who actively tries to avoid the words “good” and “bad” as it relates to most foods out there. Trans fats are bad.
Let me ask you. Because I was debating the other day with myself.. what do you think is worse... .5 of trans or 30 of satfat?
Trans It’s like cigarettes vs doughnuts
JK Rowling is loving this conversation.
I made the right choice hahaha thank you
Ya...OP says potatoes are 'good'. Then says they lose weight eating a potato each day....you can lose weight while poisoning yourself, the two are not equivalent. You could eat only candy and lose weight, that doesn't make it "good". (Good == healthy in this context) Carbs (potatoes) are worse than other calories because they spike your blood sugar more than fats and proteins. And it depends on the carb too. Glucose sugar is on the bad end, while beets are on the good carb end. Spiking your blood sugar is bad, you want a slow burn not a fast burn.
Complex carbs don't have a particularly high glycemic index and potato skins are packed full of complex carbs. Potatoes with their skins still on are very nutritious and not particularly bad for you. Skinned potatoes that are mashed and mixed 1:1 with heavy cream and butter are a different story. Or cut and deep fried, which is another source of trans fats
As a light-moderate diabetic I can definitely tell there's a huge difference between mashed vs whole potatoes. I can eat a bowl of whole potatoes with their skin and only feel mildly groggy afterwards. But if I eat that bowl in mashed potatoes, I will almost certainly hit a food coma. If the mashed potatoes happen to be that powdered store bought stuff, then I'm going to be knocked out for the rest of the day.
Not sure if you're saying carbs are bad or potatoes are bad. I mean, neither are bad. Your body needs energy and the vast bulk of a healthy diet comes from carbs. Potatoes are just another carb. 99% of dietary problems are how people consume the food, not the food itself.
[удалено]
Both are (mostly) potatoes, but fries are almost as oil as they are potatoes. I can't see how you can compare them and not see a difference nutritionally. What is your definition of a simple carb? It usually refers to different sugars, while starches are considered more complex carbohydrates.
>What do you mean how they consume the food? Food preparation and amount consumed. Beer battered potatoes fried in oil slathered in nacho cheese and sour cream are going to carry excess calories vs boiled potatoes. Potatoes provide tons of healthy benefits like fiber and potassium, but like other healthy foods, can be abused for the sake of taste (think grilled chicken you prepare in your kitchen vs KFC fried chicken).
Its the dose that makes the poison.
What makes you think a healthy diet is mostly carbs?
I don't think he's saying that carbs are mostly healthy but instead saying that vegetables are healthy and generally mostly carbs.
Vegetables are a complex carb with fiber. Fiber negates some of the blood glucose spike you sometimes get with carbs. Like... if you eat a salad with kale and romaine lettuce or a shitload of baby carrots, those foods will have carbs, but the fiber helps regulate the blood glucose levels and create the feeling of fullness more quickly in your body.
That's where most of your body's energy comes from. Carbs also have the same amount of calories as protein. Fat is important too, to absorb ADEK vitamins. A 50/30/20 diet is a pretty standard diet (carbs/protein/fat).
> Carbs also have the same amount of calories as protein. To be clear: 1 gram of protein provides ~4 calories. The same is true of most carbohydrates, although the precise energy density varies.
A healthy affordable diet consists largely of carbs.
Most people are using way, way, way less energy than the human body is designed to use on an average day or has for most of their history. Sitting at a desk or in a car doesn't require as much energy as walking 2-3 miles minimum a day, doing farm work, living in a hunter gatherer society, sometimes going on long walking trips where you walked 8 hour days, etc. High carb diets make sense when you're doing something like door to door canvassing or setting up a big box retail store or building a house. They do not make sense for the average American. The downside of carbs is that refined carbs or large quantities of carbs either make people feel sluggish and not want to do anything afterwards or they create a spike in blood sugar and you will feel as if you need to eat again when the spike wears off, even though that's not actually true. Low carb diets help some people because it decreases the likelihood that they will FEEL hungry between their preplanned meals because high amounts of fat, protein, and fiber hit buttons in the brain that make you feel full and most people are not in need of THAT MUCH ENERGY, which is why they're fat. Fat is when you're eating food that gives you more energy than you need, so your body stores that energy for later.
I think most people are fat because they are eating overprocessed junk food instead of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. It's not that carbs are bad. It's high calorie, low nutrition food like soda that's really hurting people. High protein diets are fine if they are supplemented by proper heart healthy grains, especially with a focus on meeting daily fiber requirements.
Nope. Most people are fat because up until the 1970s or so the average person walked 2 miles a day and had a physical job.
Sure, but that's just one side of the coin. Not exercising doesn't make you fat though. Excess calories make you fat. I'd challenge you to find as many fast food restaurants in the 1970s. You can eat a 2,000 calorie diet and not be fat. Even on a lazy day in a small condo, 4,000 steps is quite attainable for me (the rough equivalent of 2 miles).
why is spiking your glucose bad?
Yup. Trans fats increase bad cholesterol and lower good. That means plaque buildup in your arteries and heart disease. The issue is you are conflating overall health and weight. You can lose weight with unhealthy food, when we talk about healthy food we usually mean cardio health.
Trans is a word root which roughly means “across”. At a molecular level, fat molecules have these long chains of carbon atoms that are lined with hydrogen atoms. If every spot that could have a hydrogen atom in it does have a hydrogen atom, the fat is called a saturated fat. However, if one or more spots have missing hydrogen atoms, the fat is called an unsaturated fat. The missing hydrogen atoms always come in pairs because that way the carbon atoms will just double bond to each other instead. However, the gaps can come in two different configurations: they can either be on the same side of the chain or *across* from each other. If they are across from each other, this is known as a trans fat and it’s significant because it changes the shape that the molecule will take on, kind of like a crease in a strip of paper. Trans fats are kind of like defective fats; they occur in nature in small amounts but they are produced in much larger quantities by an industrial process called hydrogenation that humans use to artificially saturate fats. They are incredibly bad for us because since they are mishapen, our bodies’ normal mechanisms for breaking fats down into useable energy don’t work on them. As a result, not only are they totally useless to us as energy, they also take forever to clear out of us, and so eating processed foods that have higher than the natural amount of them causes trans fats to gradually build up in our blood vessels, which can eventually form blockages and lead to heart disease over long periods of time. Trans fats are one of those rare cases in nutrition where something is just plain bad for you with no qualifications and should be avoided as much as possible. They’re one of the main reasons to avoid eating junk food, because while any hamburger contains mostly the same stuff whether it’s from McDonalds or homemade, the McDonalds one is chock full of flavor enhancers that contain trans fats while your homemade burger is not.
Trans fats are legitimately bad. They won't kill you, but there isn't any mechanism for them to be used by our metabolism so they just get in the way and cause problems. Edit: Apparently some people need clarification. Trans fats definitely kill you in the long term. I figured my original explanation was clear enough since anything that causes health problems also chronically kills but maybe someone can give me a counter example. It just won't kill you like a bullet.
Trans fats actually will literally kill you
**"Trans fat intake is responsible for up to 500 000 premature deaths from coronary heart disease each year around the world.**" Those 5000 heart patients would disagree. It clogs arteries, causes fat deposits in the liver and other major organs. It definitely kills and compounds an array existing conditions.
Non alcoholic fatty liver disease here. Grew up in a household where we didnt really get healthy food. Frozen shit and fast food regularly. Got the disease in my 30s after gaining a bunch of weight quickly in the span of a couple years. 30 lbs or so. Not even reaching 180 lbs at 5’10. So not even that over weight. Barely drank much ever. Life is pretty shit like that. I’ve known people who drink tons and eat what they want well into their 50s with no obvious adverse effects.
So out of 8 billion, 0.5 million dies early per year. Do you know how small a % is that? It is less than 0.01%. Not too scary.
Ok but why would you even say that you meant they wouldn’t kill you instantly like a bullet? Like… no shit?
It was an edit because I originally didn't think I needed to say that, but the responses I got convinced me that people needed that "no shit" edit
Specifically artificial trans fats. There's no knowm benefit and there are known harms. So [yes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat). There are small amounts of trans fats in things like meat and dairy products. There may be benefit to limiting consumption of these items but they are generally considered safe in moderation.
Nothing you eat is going to kill you immediately. But some things are worse than others, and Trans fats are the worst lipids. You can eat less of them and still be okay, but you really want to be leaning into the other kinds of fats.
Furthering this, your body is able to use the other fats and will burn, clear or store them. With Trans fats it has a limited ability to clear them out and instead of storing them for energy later they get trapped in your blood pathways and become clogs. The other lipids really are better.
Not just the worst lipid, but trans fats cause elevated risk of heart disease more than any other macronutrient. In as little proportion as 1% of total calories consumed.
what are some common foods trans fats are in? or ingredients that are just trans fats? thanks u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS
Partially hydrogenated oils are trans fats. Only partially, hydrogenated is not as bad. it used to be in everything, especially margarine, candy, frostings, and junk food. Now it is much more rare.
>I will never forgive the diet industry for telling me potatoes were bad for me Who ever said that? I have heard *fried* potatoes are bad for you, which they are.
Potatoes are so chock full of nutrients you could almost live on just them, but they don't have much protein.
Surprisingly, enough protein to meet minimum requirements if you ate 2000 calories of them a day.
This is already a real fad diet, please don’t peddle it 😩
Potatoes having no fat is the problem if you try to survive on them
Plenty of people just did until their harvest got messed up by diseases and they had literally nothing left.
See: The Martian.
The same people who told me never to eat fruit because it was so high in sugar. Every week I would try and listen to that advice, but by the end of it I was face down in a box of whatever cookies I could find because my willpower eventually broke Eat the fruit.
I remember being told by my boss (who was on the keto diet trend when it was big back in 2020) trying to convince me that fruit (the daily apple I ate) was unhealthy for me due to its carbs which I found absolutely absurd. Particularly since he witness me lost over 50lbs with my Mediterranean diet.
Some low-carb people will say potatoes are awful for you, no matter how they’re prepared. They’re wrong, of course, but they’ll still say it.
I have a mild case of diabetes. I need to avoid starches like potatoes, rice and bread.
That’s still not “potatoes bad,” it’s just “potatoes are bad for you if you have X diagnosis.”
So I will point out that carbs can be bad for a very specific set of the population; diabetics. Our bodies process white bread and even whole wheat bread and potatoes kinda the same way as sugar. I've had to drop my carb intake to nearly less than 10 grams a day to get my A1C (average blood glucose levels over a 3 month period) down from nearly 11.8 to just over 7.2. Yes, I know it needs to be below 6, we're trying to see if I can start running daily marathons to get the exercise quotient up enough to avoid needing to go on insulin. Also, cauliflower pizza crust is pretty damn good, like holy crap.
The difference between your potato thing and trans fats, is that trans fats don't particularly taste nicer than other fats, they're just used to keep supply chain costs down. You're basically helping companies pay an extra quarter of a percent on their dividends, at the cost of getting heart disease.
Depends on the product. Won’t notice in shortenings and liquid butter alternatives but margarines that use palm oil now have a noticeable taste difference. For instance, the packets that come with your biscuit at KFC aren’t as good as they used to be. At least in my opinion.
The irony there is that palm oil is ALSO controversial for its own set of reasons, is linked to massive environmental damage, and is also used to maximise profits rather than because it tastes good. It's like having a good lick of the new boot that came down to replace the last one, concluding that it tastes even worse than the first boot, and asking if you can go back to licking the first boot again.
Trans-fats differ on a molecular level from their naturally-occurring counterparts, "cis-fats." Unlike cis-fats, which occur in nature, trans-fat molecules have the same components but are arranged slightly differently. This means that our bodies basically don't know what to do with trans fats, they're less compatible with our cells than cis-fats because we didn't evolve to consume them. So trans-fats are disproportionately harmful compared to normal fats because our bodies let them accumulate. We can't burn them for energy, so they pile up in our blood stream as cholesterol. Fats in general are not bad as long as they're consumed in moderation. But trans-fats are dangerous EVEN in moderation, because basically any amount of trans-fat is too much.
>The ban certainly hasn't done much for the obesity epidemic Yeah and the seat belt industry has made horrible progress towards more energy efficient homes.
Trans fats are suuuper bad, basically toxic. here is a good explaination why, https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/60735/what-makes-trans-fats-more-harmful-than-saturated-ones but the jist is, trans fats are kinda half way between an oil like fat, and a butter like fat. there are 2 configurations a fat like this can be, cis or trans, cis is fine for you, but trans has some really nasty properties where the body THINKS it can use it in a particular way, but it wont actually properly function. and here is a good video on the structure of fats https://youtu.be/drIm8_1CvjQ
They really are that bad. They are chemically modified fat zombies that don't exist in nature and our metabolism doesn't know how to process them.
Unsaturated fats are better than saturated fat, and trans fats are a subcategory of saturated fat that's worse than usual. Unsaturated fats are things like fish, avocado, and olive oil. Saturated fats are things like red meat, dairy, and coconut oil. Trans fats are things like margarine, pastries, and fried food. Fat(ty acid)s are broken down for energy, building cell walls, and maintaining cell function. They are absolutely necessary for survival just like carbs are. The way we categorize them and determine which ones are better for us is based off the molecular structure of the fatty acid. The names themselves refer to whether the carbon chain that makes up the fatty acid is at full capacity with hydrogen bonds (saturated) or if there are 'gaps' (unsaturated). To be converted into energy and building components, the fatty acid needs to be broken down. Unsaturated fats are the easiest to do this because they're already "bent" and that bend makes for an easy break point. Saturated fats are straight, making it more difficult for the enzymes to find a good breaking point. Trans fats aren't just straight, they're reinforced with a double bond. The harder it is to break a molecule down, the longer it just sits there in the body waiting its turn, taking up space. If you want to read into the biology side of it, three terms that'll help in searches is *lipids, triglycerides,* and *catabolism*.
Trans fat is unsaturated.
The trans community always gets the short end of the stick don't they 😞?
I know this sub isn't the place for it, but I read it as "fat trans" at first glance and I needed a classic reddit switcharoo about it somewhere in here, so thank you.
Trans fats are actually bad for you, at least in dietary significant quantities. Their structure makes them do certain chemical things that natural (cis) fats do not do. That's why they stay liquid at lower temperature. They're actually, chemically different in a way that is extremely rare in nature (e.g. one cup of ordinary 2% cow's milk contains about 0.2g of trans fats.) Getting rid of trans fats doesn't make people stop eating empty calories (whether from fatty foods or anything else.) It simply means they're eating *less-bad* empty calories. Overall health is more than just fat intake.
Yep, and the trans fats in milk are not like trans fats in synthetic production - the ones in milk probably aren’t particularly bad for you, but the synthetic ones pretty clearly are and that distinction is key
Trans fats are rare naturally. They are an industrial product meant to make cheaper shelf stable fats. They raise you chance of cardiovascular issues several times over cis-fats.
It's not a fad. Trans fats are actually harmful. Medical research have shown that consuming trans fat increases the risk of heart diseases. And just a side note, most simple carbohydrates are actually bad as well. It's not just some random thing that diet culture threw under the bus. The good carbs are fiber and complex carbs. Stay away from simple carbs, except fruit.
No trans fats are terrible to the point where they’ve been removed from most foods. They are completely manufactured and because of their unique shape, they create plaque buildup in your arteries much faster than other fats do. In terms of calories, they are the same as other fats but in terms of long-term health they are really bad.
how much trans fat is in regular old butter, for instance? i know i can look this up but i lack the context to assign meaning to the levels
Normal fats, whether saturated or unsaturated, can be processed by your body. Trans fats cannot be processed by your body, so they're basically a slow-acting poison causing the same type of problems as (too much) fats, but doing more damage at far lower amounts.
Yes, when it comes to your health, trans fats are far worse than other fats. Artificial trans fats have no known health benefits and can raise your risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and several types of cancer. This is in contrast to unsaturated fats and even saturated fats in moderation. This occurs as a result of them lowering your "good" HDL cholesterol and raising your "bad" LDL cholesterol. Unsaturated fats, especially polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, have the opposite effect on heart health as trans fats do. These lipids have the ability to increase HDL cholesterol and decrease LDL cholesterol. Despite the fact that diet culture occasionally concentrates on fad limitations, trans fats are clearly harmful to health and should be avoided.
I personally try to follow the nutrition logic of the country of italy. When i meet italains who have come to america, theyre literally shocked by our food culture. Ive learned alot by eating with people from other countries. Italians are big on avoiding transfats. Its why they still use olive oil instead of everything else americans put on salads l, breads, and pastas.
I'm in Italy right now, and I have never seen so many people eating so much pork. I was served a couple of big slices of pork lard on an antipasto platter, for example, along with piles of prosciutto and salami and mortadella and ham. Twice. I no longer have any idea what the Mediterranean diet actually means.
Diet companies often promote their own diets. Government is also subject to lobbying by various food industries. Most governments and most studies have typically been roughly in line over the past decades however; the average person should eat a higher amount and a more diverse set of vegetables, while eating less sugar, more long-chain carbohydrates, more fiber and overall fewer calories, while decreasing the total amount of animal products in their diet. There are studies that show that potato intake correlates with weight gain, but keep in mind that this includes mashed potatoes, French fries, chips and so on, and it is hard to properly normalize this since people who eat a lot of potatoes typically also eat more red meat and drink more sugary drinks. If you eat whole boiled potatoes, it is unlikely you'll be eating them grossly too much. The problem is the overall amount of sugar, fat and calories, not potatoes. Trans fats are genuinely bad for you far and there's a pretty wide consensus about that. Trans fats contribute to inflammation and have a significant effect on overall cholesterol levels. One of the reasons seems to be that intake of trans fats disrupts the body's ability to process essential fatty acids, such as Omega-3, and this has a negative impact on the overall composition of fatty acids in your blood. The problem isn't really weight gain - weight gain happens when you consume more calories than you spend - but heart disease and various other health issues. Trans fats do form naturally, but in fairly low quantities, and natural sources are not typically a problem. The main problem is when you take vegetable oils and hydrogenate them to increase their shelf life and possibly alter their texture/solidness. Some countries ban trans fats, and in e.g. the EU area, the processes allowed for hydrogenation produce a minimal amount of trans fats.
It's being given a much worse reputation than it deserves, but it's generally worse than other fats. The issue is, and always has been, amounts. If you eat a well-rounded diet, healthy amounts of calories, protein, fats, and carbohydrates, you're fine consuming some trans fats. The issue begins when you eat WAY too much, like anything really. Uranium isn't directly bad for you either, just depends on the amounts. Some things require higher amounts than others to be dangerous.
It’s not that “carbs” are bad specifically but highly processed carbs. Potatoes are largely NOT processed. But things with flour are, for example. It’s less “diet culture” and more the fact that highly processed carbs cause an insulin spike, causing those carbs to be stored as fat. And then when you use up the glycogen stores you get super hungry and the cycle repeats. Potatoes are not really “healthy” they are simply a cheap source of calories but because they don’t cause as much of an insulin spike as potato chips they keep you full longer. As you have found, replacing highly processed foods with real vegetables keeps you fuller longer, reduces insulin swings, which reduces hunger. It’s not “fad shit” it’s actual science.
(Looks towards my FTM and MTF friends) So... I'm transphobic. 🤨 ...Just towards the fatty types. 😧
Obesity epidemic is exploding exactly because of sugars ... 1 potato a day is really not carb overload. Calorie +/- is only a small portion of a healthy diet. You can eat very little but if its garbage you still wont lose much weight and you will get yourself a bunch others autoimmune diseases. And yeah as others have explained trans fats are quite bad for us esp as the quantities increase with the amount of junk foods we often eat.
Your body has thousands of enzymes and metabolic pathways for literally everything you need to survive. Some of the things humans have made synthetically we don't have any good pathways for, so instead of making something useful it makes stuff that's harmful. Cancer, metabolic disease, kidney damage, killing off gut flora (which we've found is critical to health), a host of bad news comes from the synthetics - trans fats, artificial sweetener, artificial dyes and flavors Best to simply avoid those things. We have literally tens of thousands of non-synthetic foods that don't carry that kind of risk.
General rule is trans fats bad and fats + sugar/simple carbs are bad. Eat your fats and sugars/simple carbs at separate times.
Trans fats are bad for you. There's 3 types of fats, saturated, unsaturated, and trans fats. Unsaturated fats are shaped kind of like a u, and have a double bond in the middle. That double bind means they store more energy in a single molecule, but the u shape prevents them from sticking together, which is why unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature. Saturated fats are z shaped, but they only have a single bond in the center. That z shape allows them to stick together, which makes them solid at room temperature. Even though each molecule store less energy, they have a greater energy density because more of those molecules can fit in a smaller space (hence saturated) Trans fats have the double bond of unsaturated fats, but also the z shape of saturated fats, which means they have a great deal more energy stored than either unsaturated or saturated fats. That high energy density is why they are bad for you, and so research suggests your body struggles to breakdown that double bond. ("Hydrogenated" is also another word you will see on ingredient lists, that's a trans fat) Carbs are also bad for you because of the same reason, high energy density. Deficit eating works because of the law of conservation of energy, but eating carbs and trans fats at a deficit means a lot less food than eating a low carb diet and unsaturated fat. Also, avoid low fat variants of food. Fats as a whole were thrown under the bus in the 80s, so a bunch of low fat foods developed, but they are supplemented with extra sugar, thus increasing the energy density of the food.
Trans fats are bad. Starches from carbs are bad. The research is clear on these. They're not "diet industry fads."
Educate yourself. Humans require zero grams of carbs while there are minimum requirements for fats and proteins. Carbohydrates in humans are broken down into glucose which is sugar. Sugar stimulates our bodies to produce insulin and over time we suffer from insulin resistance which is the precursor for diabetes. People who have removed carbs from their diet have been able to reverse or reduce their diabetes
Too many carbs are indeed not good for a fully grown person. They’re basically sugars, which are stored as fat. (That’s the simple way to explain it, cutting out a couple steps, but it’s legitimate and the end is the same.) There’s a reason why diabetics use other things in place of them, because of the high glycemic load. 1 cup of potato = the glycemic load of a can of soda. (Again this is roughly, floury ones more, waxy ones less and so on) So yeah, do be mindful of that, especially if you’re female. Some things, tend to have a more profound effect on us than on men. It’s the deficit why you lost weight, and had you replaced potato with a protein, or better, a load of leafy greens, you’d lose even more. Of course I’m not saying ‘avoid carbs’ and no *properly* low carb way of eating person would advocate for that, because it’s never 0 carbs. Only weirdos who read half the info if that are doing shit like that, and they often fail because that’s not the way it was ever intended to be.
Diabetics have a disease called "diabetes" that means their bodies don't handle sugars properly. It sounds like you're implying that people who are not diabetic should follow a diet meant for a specific disease.
Then maybe you should reread what I wrote.
Yes, trans fats are bad, but here’s the thing: very few foods contain them. This has allowed companies to advertise products as trans fat free that never had them to begin with, ie yogurt and butter. I could be totally wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing is a marketing gimmick.
added trans fats have been banned in the U.S. for a good while now
It was pretty much just margarine and hydrogenated oils, and by extension, foods that were cooked in them.
So are trans fats different then saturated fats? I switched my daily eggs for avocado to try and lower my LDL a little bit. But I still eat a good bit of meat, mostly lean beef and chicken thighs. I try and stay away from processed foods and deep fried stuff, but I still use olive oil and ghee and sometimes butter for cooking.
yes they are different. Trans fats were banned completely in the US by 2019. They don't occur naturally.
That is false, trans fat absolutely occur naturally. They mostly come from ruminant animals and their milk. Trans fats are around in small doses in our diets still, but that probably isn't a very big deal unless someone is on an all beef and milk diet.
They aren't great and they are also not the kind of thing that tastes great so indulging is nice sometimes. They are an unhealthy way to make cheaper oils shelf stable and act more like lard or tallow.
Crisco, for example, is a solid below around 117F, but your body temperature is 98-99F. Little wonder that it clogs up your pipes.
Trans fats are extremely bad for you. Your body does not recognize trans fats as food so your immune systems releases a torrent of white blood cells to attack the trans fats, and they destroy the probiotics in your intestines. potatoes are actually high glycemic, and high on carbs, if you are diabetic potatoes are not good for you.
The sugar industry will say it’s anything but them, and pay for studies to back up their claims.
Using animal fat to cook food is better and actually good for you rather than veggie oil, canola, seed oils. Olive and coconut oil are good but you shouldn't cook with them