* LABEL SAVVY!- Shelf Life…Or Death?: Hydrogenated Oils & Trans Fats
14 October 2007 by The Hot Potato
THE HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community
by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, October 2007, #31
THIS WEEK’S DISH:
LABEL SAVVY! -
Shelf Life…Or Death?: Hydrogenated Oils & Trans Fats
“FEEDING THE YOUNG (COMIC)” by Mike Adams and Dan Berger, originally published Friday, March 23, 2007. To see more health comics by Mike (concept) and Dan (artist), please visit www.NewsTarget.com.
A PLASTIC BAG can take decades to biodegrade. Your food (and a bag) should not last this long. Hydrogenated and partially-hydrogenated oils are all too common ingredients in many foods you may find at grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, carnivals, hospitals, schools, or any food-serving establishment, including your kitchen. Trans fats won’t give food the shelf life of a plastic bag, but they do greatly extend the amount of time before the grocery stores have to toss the unsold food item. Here’s the rub: food is not meant to be artificially preserved. Canning, drying, fermenting, pickling, preserving, and other methods of putting food by are all traditional, time-tested, and natural methods of making food last longer. Certain non-chemical additives can be used to prolong the life of food, such as citric acid and sea salt, and in bodycare products, naturally occuring preservatives could be vitamin E and grapeseed extract.
Unlike trans fats, these natural methods preserve (and in some cases, like fermenting, improve) the quality and health of the food. Food made with hydrogenated oils stick around longer. But then the trans fat in the food sticks around in your body. And then what?
A STICKY SITUATION & NYC
If you grind peanuts into nut butter yourself, you may have one to two weeks, possibly longer, before your once delicious, sticky spread starts to turn a pale, rancid shade. Buy it in a jar without any salt or other additives a.k.a. REAL peanut butter, and you have the luxury of keeping that vacuum-sealed peanut butter, unopened, for up to six months or longer, though you lose some of the flavor, freshness, and health benefits of the freshly ground nut butter.
But what happens when that jar of peanut butter has refined salt added? The shelf life goes up again, but what does that mean for your “health life”? Suppose you add hydrogenated oil, a common ingredient added to peanut butter, crackers, breakfast cereals, cookies, frozen pizzas, and a whole host of other processed foods. Again, the shelf-life gets a boost, but what are the consequences for your health? Why has New York City totally banned the use of trans fats in restaurants, and why are other countries considering similar bans?
In the end, who benefits from the use of hydrogenated oils in food? What are the hidden costs to the consumer? In this edition of The Hot Potato’s “Label Savvy”, we explore today’s most common food preservative, its possible health effects, and how to spot it on your food labels.
THE RESEARCH: HOW TRANS FATS EFFECT YOUR HEALTH
Partially hydrogenated and fully hydrogenated oils have been used in food since the early 1900’s, when Proctor and Gamble first introduced Crisco, a hydrogenated vegetable oil mixed with animal fat for cooking. By the 1930’s, hydrogenated cooking oils like Crisco had become common in American households. During this same period in American history, alarming increases in the rate of several diseases began to take place. A new disease baffling the medical establishment began to develop in people - non-insulin dependent diabetes (type II diabetes). Sharp increases in incidences of cancer and heart disease also occurred, and new diseases, designated as auto-immune diseases, began to emerge.
It would be easy to write this off as mere coincidence, except for one not so small problem. Modern research into the effects of hydrogenated oils on the body have revealed a conclusive link between consumption of hydrogenated oils and type II diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.
Studies of hydrogenated oils conducted over the past ten years have confirmed that these oils significantly contribute to the hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis), raise bad cholesterol (LDL) levels while lowering good cholesterol (HDL), negatively affect bone development, negatively affect the body’s immune system, decrease breast milk output in women, contribute to low birth weight in infants, and increase the incidence of breast cancer in women. The list does not stop there. A 14-year study involving 85,000 nurses, conducted by Dr. Walter Willett of Harvard Medical, revealed that those nurses who consumed hydrogenated oils had the highest rate of heart disease.
The research speaks with clear conclusions. Choose your food wisely. Name brands and cheap marketing gimmicks should mean nothing when it comes to you deciding what foods you and your family enjoy and nourish your bodies with. Now is the time to read labels and ingredient lists, ask questions, and truly care about your health. You may not always be in the mood to monitor every ingredient at a restaurant or special get together, but if you can read an ingredient list, do it. If you see trans fats on the list, you are now informed to make a choice whether or not to eat it. But what if you find that you are stuck in an unhealthy relationship with foods that contain trans fats? Trust us - there are way better fish in the sea of wise and delicious food choices!
MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE: HOW TO MAKE TRANS FATS
What makes hydrogenated oils so bad for our bodies? Let’s take a look at the chemical process that goes into hydrogenation. Hydrogenated oils are formed when hydrogen bubbles are passed through oil that has been heated to extremely high temperatures. The fatty acids in the oil link up with the hydrogen molecules, making the oil more dense.
Hydrogenation gas is fused into the oil using a metal catalyst comprised of aluminum, cobalt, and nickel. All of these metals are toxic to the human body. The name “trans fat” refers to the hydrogen molecules moving to the opposite side of the fatty acid molecules (”trans” means “other side of”) during hydrogenation. The fatty acids naturally found in oils are beneficial to human health, but these new chemically-altered trans fats have been rendered toxic to our bodies.
The end result of hydrogenation is an oil that matches the molecular structure of stearic acid, a substance used in the hardening of candles. Fully hydrogenated oil remains solid at room temperature, while partially hydrogenated oil is semi-solid, with a consistency somewhat like butter. This consistency makes it useful as a texturizer and flavor enhancer. The addition of hydrogenated oils also greatly increases the shelf life of foods.
Food companies continue to use hydrogenated oils because they are cheap, abundant, and increase profits by greatly increasing shelf life. The majority of foods produced and sold in America today contain hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. Take a look at the ingredient label next time you pick up a frozen pizza, a box of cookies, or any other common packaged food, and you might be surprised to find that you’ve been eating this all along, without being aware of it. The food companies are not required to provide special warning labels for toxic ingredients such as hydrogenated oils, aspartame, monosodium glutamate (MSG), and a laundry list of other harmful food additives.
Beware of foods that label themselves “trans fat free”. Just because a food is trans fat free doesn’t necessarily mean it’s hydrogenated oil free. Trans fats are a major part of the toxicity issue with hydrogenated oils, but these oils have still been chemically altered and processed using toxic metals. Check the ingredient label for hydrogenated oils, mono-diglycerides (these oils may be hydrogenated), or “shortening”, another hydrogenated oil. The bottom line is, hydrogenated oils, trans fat free or not, are toxic to the human body, and regular consumption of these substances is best avoided. Of course, it’s not just at the grocery store where hydrogenated oils lurk. Restaurants and fast food places often fry appetizers and entrees such as french fries and chicken in a big stinky vat of hydrogenated oil. When you go out to eat, you have every right to ask what’s in the food, how is it cooked, where does it come from?
In future editions of Label Savvy!, we hope to discuss healthy fats and oils as well as natural and artificial flavors, artificial coloring, MSG, and the best healthy alternative ingredients. See also our previous Label Savvy! article “The Sweet And Low-Down On Healthy And Unhealthy Sweeteners”. Until next time, the Hot Potato is in your hands. Pass it on!
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SOURCES:
Dewey, David Lawrence, “Hydrogenated Oils- Silent Killers”, www.dldewey.com/hydroil.htm
Armstrong, Eric, “What’s Wrong With Partially Hydrogenated Oils?”, www.treelight.com/health/nutrition/PartiallyHydrogenatedOils.html
FYI, Whole Foods grocery stores are 100% trans fats-free. Every product you see at Whole Foods contains absolutely no hydrogenated oils.
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Death by Oil
This is author/columnist, David Lawrence Dewey.
Thank you for bringing this to the attention on your blog
and for linking to my Hydrogenated Oils-Silent Killers
column. I was the first journalist to start writing about the
dangers of these deadly oils and aspartame in 1996.
You and your readers may want to join and help out in
the 2007 Health Reform 90 Day Petition Campaign that
I am working with Greta Ferebee, a housewife from Florida.
Nationwide we are calling on the help of Americans to
gather 10 million signatures on Petitions to send to Congress to force the FDA to , ASPARTAME, MSG, HYDROGENATED OILS, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP and all artificial and chemical preservatives, additives and dyes which are added in large quantities to the American food supply.
All we are asking is for each person to simply collect
(10) signatures on one Petition of family and friends,
and give each of those people a Petition so they can
collect (10) signatures, then mail the Petition to the address
on the Petition and make a copy and mail to each of
their U.S. Senators and Representatives from their State.
We also ask that you return to my site and submit how many signatures you have collected so that we can keep track of how many have been mailed to Washington.
I urge every American citizen for their health, for the heath of their children to get involved in this campaing to remove
these toxins from the food supply.
You can read more about this at my website:
2007 Health Reform 90 Day Nationwide Campaign
http://www.dldewey.com/ahr.htm
Thank you, and please get involved.
One voice can become millions!
David Lawrence Dewey