The FastDay Forum

See a lot in the media about "transfats" and I even had myself mentioning them in a conversation with someone not really understanding them.

Can some clarify "transfats" in the context of other fats, our IF way of life and health generally.

What are some good online articles or references you can share?

Good question, I've myself felt very unsure about these things, time to dig a little deeper and perhaps get some basic understanding.

Fats consists of chains of carbon atoms, hydrogen atoms and some oxygen atoms. Two carbon atoms are "joined", or connected to each other by sharing some outer shell electrons.

If the carbon atoms join by sharing two electrons, it's a "single bond".

If the carbon atoms are joined by sharing four electrons it's a "double bond"

A single bond means greater flexibity in how the carbon atoms can move in regards to each other, it's only one link and less stiff than if it's a double bond with two bonds with four electrons. That's why unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature and saturated fats are not.

Unsaturated fats have one or more double bonds, which means there are more electrons swishing arout out there in the "outer orbit" electron cloud than in saturated fats, which only have single bonds.

All those electrons flying around there in the unsaturated fat makes it highly reactive, these electrons can easily catch up some passing by hydrogen atom. The fat goes rancid.

If you add more hydrogen atoms, thus reducing the number of electrons roaming around, it gets more solid.

Which is what you do when you transform an unsaturated fat to "partially hydrogenerated" by adding a lot of hydrogen to it. You heat it up and press hydrogen into it under pressure. It became popular during WWII with all these logistical problems with supporting large armies and keepin everyone reasonably happy.

Trans fats is solid at room temperature, it gives food manufacturers the ability to create tasty products that be stored at room temperature without getting smelly, with structure enough for packing and and distribution.

The problem with these hydrogenerated, or trans fats, comes from the fact that you don't find much of them in nature. Our bodies have evolved to deal with saturated fat since we love bacon, and unsaturated fat since we sometimes find nuts and avocados.

The hydrogenerated fat is treated like it's saturated fat, but it's not. The process to use it for energy at a cellular level is not very efficient, it's stored somewhere making you fat, which is bad, or in your arteries, which isn't all that great either.

Adding some hydrogen to these unsaturated fats, makes them move in a different way from both saturated and unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats are very pliable, they can easily move through all of your 100.000 km of blood vessels, dissolving plack along the way. Hydrogenerated fats are not as pliable, and doesn't dissolve much plack, instead they get stuck in smaller blood vessels and create more of it.


I'm not sure how dangerous these trans fats actually are, but I see no reason other than convenience, poverty or laziness to eat them.

No margarine, no cookies in brightly coloured packages from stores, no stock cubes (?), avoid ready meals, don't eat too often at inexpensive restaurants since they stopped cooking a long time ago, they use cheap labour to quickly put together factory made products from these brightly coloured packages nowadays. Make your own food from scratch if possible, put it in a box and bring it to work.

With this diet, and especially with the low carb thing, you get a lot of your energy from fat in general. I would suppose the quality of these fats gets more important.


Some links,


Not sure about her views un saturated fats, but an excellent explanaition if you have 10 minutes, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgjxPH_jaJk#t=601

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/uknow/features/?id=19

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/saturated-monounsaturated-and-polyunsaturated-fats.html

http://wewantorganicfood.com/2007/09/02/saturated-fats-versus-partially-hydrogenated-vegetable-oils-and-trans-fats/

Nice pics of the molecular structure of various fats, http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/molecular-structure-fat, picture 11 and 12 explains an interesting difference, how a trans fat fatty acid is straight instead of slightly bent. I could imagine it getting stuck in some capillary in your brain.


OK, that's about what I can make of it, please correct me if I got something wrong here.

Thank you, I appreciated your efforts to put that together for us all. So where does butter sit, as well as coconut oil do they go smoothly through your arteries. Gee I hope so as I have been imbibing

I NEVER knowingly consume Transfats as I consider then not much better than eating plastic. Animals will starve to death before they will eat margarine as like plastic, it never goes rancid. Natural fats are the ones for me like, butter, cream, full fat milk etc

Thank you Michael for the very interesting article it must have taken you some time to collate it all.

Ballerina x

Oh, it's fun to learn somehting new by trying to explain to others. Butter, lard, coconut oil and other saturated fats might still be a contested area, but to me it seems reasonable our bodies should be able to deal with them really well as long as we get some unsaturated fats for unclogging as well.

I figure, you can use butter to get rid of grease on your hands (does margarine work just as well?), you can use oil to make butter soft in the fridge. As long as it doesn't stick and get too solid on various surfaces it should be ok.

Maybe I got this wrong,

All those electrons flying around there in the unsaturated fat makes it highly reactive, these electrons can easily catch up some passing by hydrogen atom. The fat goes rancid.

Does the fat go rancid from contact with hydrogen? It probably should rather be oxygen methinks, that's probably why they add antioxidants like vitamin E and C to various food products.

[carorees]

Hydrogenated does not equal trans fat. Trans fats are unsaturated and the term trans refers to how the hydrogen atoms are arranged around the double bond: trans or cis formation. Here's a good explanation: http://www.thelabrat.com/review/WhatIsTransFat.shtml

Hydrogenation of a polyunsaturated fat results in some or all of the double bonds being broken in order to add hydrogen atoms. Saturated fats like coconut oil cannot be trans fats therefore.

I think i need to go back to my chemistry textbooks to understand all of this.

is there a "simple layman's" definition and explanation.

once one mentions bonds, saturation, atoms or anything similar it gets completely lost.

but i think from a behavioural point of view i got

Trans fats are "bad fats"

Avoid margarine
Avoid processed foods and takeways as you are likely to consume trans fats
Use lots of butter and i think, coconut oil
Eat "natural" foods

OK, I thought I had it, now confused again. Back to school..

I guess this might be questionable as well..

A single bond means greater flexibity in how the carbon atoms can move in regards to each other, it's only one link and less stiff than if it's a double bond with two bonds with four electrons. That's why unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature and saturated fats are not.

Unsaturated fats doesn't have hydrogen atoms stacked as evenly all the way around the carbon chain, this makes them slightly twisted or curved instead of straight like saturated fats or trans fats or hydrogenated fats. Saturated, trans fats and hydrogenated fats with their straight chains can be packed more tightly, the fat mass is more dense. Thats why they are solid at room or body temperature.

[carorees]

In the diagram above, the centre image, labelled "unsaturated fat" is in fact the cis formation, whereas the right hand image is the trans formation.

The effect of the double bond on the shape of the molecule can be seen here:


As MichaelH says, the bent shape created by the double bond means that the molecules cannot fit tightly together and so means that this type of fat does not solidify until the temperature is lower than is the case with a saturated fat.

Animal fats tend to be saturated whereas vegetable fats tend to be unsaturated.

To create margarine, food manufacturers partially hydrogenate vegetable oil. This breaks some of the double bonds and adds hydrogen atoms. When naturally occurring unsaturated fatty acids are altered by partial hydrogenation, they are converted to saturated fatty acids, which have the effect of straightening the chains and changing the physical properties.

Also during partial hydrogenation, some of the unsaturated fatty acids, which are normally found as the cis isomer about the double bonds, are changed to a trans double bond and remain unsaturated. Trans fatty acids of the same length and weight as the original cis fatty acids, still have the same number of carbons, hydrogens, and oxygens but they are now shaped in a more linear form, as opposed to the bent forms of the cis isomers. See this diagram:


The health impact of different fats in the diet appears to depend on the balance of not only the different types of fat but also of carbohydrate in the diet. It seems that saturated fat in the context of a low carb diet does not adversely impact blood cholesterol levels (we're assuming that high blood cholesterol is a bad thing here). Further, replacing some of the saturated fat content of the diet with carbohydrates worsens the blood lipid profile. Trans fats appear to have an adverse effect on blood cholesterol, however, I can't find whether this holds true if carbs are reduced. Trans fats appear to have a stronger effect on blood lipids than do saturated fats in the context of a standard (i.e., high carb) diet, so for now, I think avoiding trans fats and reducing carb intake is probably where we are in terms of the best way to reduce blood cholesterol. So, look for the term 'partially hydrogenated vegetable oil' on the ingredients list of the food you are buying and put it back on the shelf if you see these words!

This article gives a nice review of some of the studies about saturated fat, trans fats and unsaturated fats and their effects on cholesterol:
http://www.njmonline.nl/getpdf.php?id=10000756

I was looking at the cholesterol reducing margarine my parents buy and it of course has transfats. Wonder if one would just cancel out the other.

Hmm.., I have this deep fryer at home, sometimes making fish & sweet potato chips. Does this create trans fats, are there strong reasons to stop eating deep fried food at all, regardless of the quality of the oil used?

[carorees]

No, you can't make trans fats by frying normal vegetable oils: http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-f ... table-oils

Gosh, this thread has taken me back to high school and uni.... um, sometime last century. Here's an article I spotted this morning about banning transfats in the US:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/trans-fa ... 2x521.html