Two decades ago I read a study about the analysis of cholesterol in the arteries of people who died of coronary artery disease. It turned out that much of the gunk lining these arteries wasn’t cholesterol at all – it was Crisco - hydrogenated vegetable oil. Since then I have been warning people not to eat anything with vegetable shortening that is chemically more like plastics than food. Today we call these substances trans fats. The industry has known about this for at least that long! Only now, after even more publicity than they could squelch, they’ve started to do something about it.

Trans fats are used mostly for commercial cooking and food preparation, and is one of the main sources of disease in the Standard American Diet (S.A.D.). Hydrogenation adds hydrogen gas to vegetable oil, helping to solidify it into a molecule that more closely resembles plastic than food. The process, used for margarine or shortening, makes them more unhealthy than real butter, since hydrogenated fats act like cholesterol in your body.

Now a law in California holds manufacturers liable for their products if they are known by manufacturers to be unsafe, though not by consumers. In other words, they may be liable for hiding the truth! So finally, after years of knowingly making product bad for your heart, someone is doing something about!

Let’s hold all food manufacturers responsible for their products! By the way – the company which owns Oreos also owns major cigarette brands. Think about it!

More Facts about Trans Fats

Trans fats (or trans fatty acids) are created in an industrial process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid. Another name for trans fats is “partially hydrogenated oils.” Look for them on the ingredient list on food packages.

The reason why food industries like using trans fats in their foods because they’re easy to use, inexpensive to produce and last a long time. Trans fats give foods a desirable taste and texture. Many restaurants and fast-food outlets use trans fats to deep-fry foods because oils with trans fats can be used many times in commercial fryers.

Trans fats affect your health in a way that trans fats raise your bad (LDL) cholesterol levels and lower your good (HDL) cholesterol levels. Eating trans fats increases your risk of developing heart disease and stroke. It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, cancer, arthritis and many other health problems.

Why did trans fats become so popular if they have such health effects? As we know, before1990, very little was known about how trans fat can harm your health. In the 1990s, research began identifying the adverse health effects of trans fats.

Trans Fats are found  everywhere

Perhaps you find that it is hard to completely avoid trans fats because they can be found in many foods – but especially in fried foods like French fries and doughnuts, and baked goods including pastries, pie crusts, biscuits, pizza dough, cookies, crackers, and stick margarines and shortenings.  You can determine the amount of trans fats in a particular packaged food by looking at the Nutrition Facts label.  You can also spot trans fats by reading ingredient lists and looking for the ingredients referred to as “partially hydrogenated oils.”

The natural trans fats

Small amounts of trans fats occur naturally in some meat and dairy products, including beef, lamb and butterfat.  It isn’t clear; though, whether these naturally occurring trans fats have the same bad effects on cholesterol levels as trans fats that have been industrially manufactured.

The safe dosage

The American Heart Association recommends limiting the amount of trans fats you eat to less than 1 percent of your total daily calories.  That means if you need 2,000 calories a day, no more than 20 of those calories should come from trans fats.  That’s less than 2 grams of trans fats a day.  Given the amount of naturally occurring trans fats you probably eat every day, this leaves virtually no room at all for industrially manufactured trans fats.  Find out your personal daily fat limits on My Fats Translator.

How can you stay within your daily limit for trans fats?

Read the Nutrition Facts label on foods you buy at the store and, when eating out, ask what kind of oil foods are cooked in.  Replace the trans fats in your diet with monounsaturated or  polyunsaturated fats.  For practical tips, learn how to Live Fat-Sensibly.

The health benefits of exercise impact your body from head to toe. By exercising at least 30 minutes a day on most days of the week, you can dramatically lower your risk of disease and injury. Exercise also helps improve your emotional health.

5 Health Benefits of Exercise

It is impossible to fully calculate the health payoff of a few weekly hours at the gym, in the pool or on the field. However, if you need a little extra motivation to get active, consider the following five health benefits of regular exercise:

1. Strengthens and protects your heart and lungs. Exercise provides numerous benefits to the heart. It lowers levels of LDL (or “bad”) cholesterol, reducing the risk of blockages (plaques) in your arteries that can lead to heart ailments. Exercise also reduces high blood pressure.Regular workouts help build your lung capacity, which improves your body’s ability to use oxygen. As heart and lung function becomes more efficient, blood travels more easily through the body. This helps you feel a higher level of energy.
2. Increases muscular strength and joint flexibility. Strength-training exercises build muscle tissue, boosting your overall strength and making it easier to do everything from controlling your dog as he strains at the leash to lifting baggage into the overhead bin of an airplane. In addition, exercise increases the flexibility of your joints, making them less likely to become injured.
3. Promotes weight loss. Exercise burns calories. Most people who are overweight will shed pounds if the amount of calories they expend exceeds the amount of calories they take in while eating. People who are not overweight will better maintain their healthy weight level even as they age and their metabolism begins to slow.Maintaining a healthy body weight is crucial to reducing the risk of many illnesses and conditions, including heart disease and diabetes. In addition, a slimmer body frame reduces the pressure on bones and joints and reduces the risk of osteoarthritis.
4. Improves mood and reduces stress. When you exercise, the body releases neurotransmitters known as endorphins. The release of these chemicals helps reduce pain, relieves stress and gives you a sense of overall well-being. Exercise also activates the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine, which help relieve depression.
5. Builds and maintains strong bones.  Weight-bearing exercise builds and strengthens bones. This can help ward off osteoporosis, a thinning of the bones that occurs in many women after menopause and in some men as they age.Strength training exercises and weight-bearing activities can best build bone mass. Examples of weight-bearing activities include walking, running or jogging; skiing; weight-lifting; basketball and aerobic activities such as dancing.Older adults without a previous history of regular exercise can still increase bone density through exercise.

Exercise also boosts your emotional health in other ways. For example, a person who becomes fit is likely to have a stronger self-image.

Use It or Lose It

According to a 1990 CDC study, lack of exercise and poor diet accounts for about 14 percent of all deaths every year, making this combination the biggest lifestyle-related killer of Americans aside from smoking.

Failure to exercise can be directly linked to higher risk of coronary artery disease,  colon cancer, and type 2 diabetes, according to the CDC. People who are regularly active sharply reduce these risks.

However, you must continue to exercise throughout your lifetime to maintain these benefits. Within months of stopping exercise, nearly all of the health benefits of exercise disappear.Even professional athletes fail to maintain any of the long-term benefits of exercise unless they continue to remain active. Therefore, it is important to view exercise as an ongoing, long-term investment in better health.