Miguatemala Health Blog

Archive for the ‘trans fats’ Category

Shortenings and margarines containing artificial trans fat for frying or whether it spreads, the danger posed by these fats for health (cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc). The packaged food, however, is not covered by the ban and continue allowing it to contain trans fats.

And you will wonder what are trans fats and why are they so bad?
Though socially there is an aversion to fat, these are necessary for a balanced diet in proper proportion, but we continue with our discussion …

There are fats with beneficial properties and other harmful. In animals abundant saturated fatty acids (the molecules have no double bonds according to their chemical structure) that can be cooked at high temperatures. Therefore animal fats are more solid. In vegetables the contrary abound unsaturated (double and triple bonds) that have a lower melting point, as are liquids. Thus vegetable fats are oils.

However, unsaturated fats can become saturated by hydrogenation (of double or triple bonds) in this way, we get animal fats but vegetable (cheaper than those of animal origin) for the manufacture of margarine for example. I will ring the terms of trans fat hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated. These are called trans fats.

Trans fats are very similar to those obtained from the animal source, such as butter or margarine are similar (in appearance only, of course). Then .. if they are equal, why have banned them is not?.

Animal fats are more flavorful but are more expensive to obtain, besides the trans promote freshness, texture and stability give the final product. The conversion process possible to obtain large amounts of fat equal to the animal but still much cheaper vegetable.