Trans Fat Conundrum

Both trans fats and saturated fats increase your bad cholesterol levels and your risk of heart disease. However, since trans fats may also decrease your HDL (“good”) cholesterol (and may have other harmful effects), some experts believe that trans fats may be somewhat worse for you than saturated fats. That doesn’t mean you should eat more saturated fats, or that you should substitute saturated fats for trans fats.

Very small amounts of trans fats occur naturally in some meat and dairy products, so eliminating trans fats to zero is impractical. The Heart Association recommends limiting the amount of trans fats you eat to less than 1 percent of your total daily calories. For example, if you eat 2,000 calories a day, that means less than 20 calories (less than 2 grams) of trans fats a day – and that’s a very small amount. For practical purposes, this means avoiding foods which contain or are prepared with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

simply put, trans fats do not exit your body, instead they stay in and clog your arteries up and it has been decided by the scientists that first said hydrgenated products were better than natural now say we should have none at all.

There are a lot of ways to prepare your meals ahead of time. I do mine with my husband on Sundays and that way it only takes an hour or so and then the rest of the week we just need to heat the food up. Another option is a crock pot, you can throw any kind of meat with some veggies in there and wala, instant dinner, plus the house smells yummy when you get home. Pre packaged salads, while a bit more expensive do make it easy on us parents to throw together a salad with some grilled chicken.

It is a new process for you and many others and it takes time but you will figure out ways to make fresh healthy meals that satisfy you and the kids and your time crunch.

What most zero trans fat advertisements fail to mention is that so-called "healthy" oils such as soy oil, salad oil and in particular canola (rapeseed) are highly processed to stabilize them because in their natural state vegetable and seed oils are extremely fragile, vulnerable to light, heat and oxygen. The stabilizing process involves high heat and often chemical deodorizing as part of the refining process. In the process the good nutrients are lost, free radicals and trans fats are formed (this begins to happen at 320 degrees...anyone who has ever fried anything knows that for food not to soak up the oil it has to be at least 350 degrees to fry in). and taste more or less disappears entirely. These oils depress immune functions and in particular canola oil has been implicated with fibrotic heart lesions, negative changes in blood plateles and vitamin E deficiency. Because it is also known to retard growth, the FDA does not allow it to be used in infant formula (but does allow soy oil which is 50% trans fat...go figure!)
In addition, in most restaurants where these oils are promoted as health preserving, they are often used multiple times (for instance in a deep fat fryer that is on for sometimes 18 hours at a stretch and fries many batches of foods), which further breaks them down until almost the entire fat is a trans-fat.
If you want to avoid trans fats use coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil and nonhydrogenated peanut oil instead.
And yes, I did say coconut oil. Coconut oil is probably one of the healthiest oils on earth for you. A furor arose in the early 1980's over thes so-called "tropical oils" which are indeed saturated fats, but it was backed and promoted by...guess who...the American Soybean Association, who lobbied congress and opened hearings on the subject of the dangers of tropical oils. Dr. George Blackburn of Harvard testified that there was nothing wrong with tropical oils, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop called the whole thing "foolishness" but the tropical oils lost and the American soy agri-business lobbies won, and tropical oils were all but banished from the American food supply and replaced with soy oil which is 50% dangerous trans fat.
So here is the truth about coconut oil: It is a low-fat fat, several calories fewer per gram than all other fats. It has zero cholesterol. It increases metabolic rates. It is an excellent source of fiber. It is used for energy, not easily converted to body fat. It protects against heart disease and cancer. It is naturally organic. It is the safest cooking oil. It contains lauric acid, the protective substance in mother's milk to support the immune system. It has strong antiviral activity: it's effective against herpes and Hepatitis C. It's antimicrobial, antibacterial, antifungal and anti inflammatory. It is full of antioxidents.
I made a deal with my doctor when I was diagnosed with diabetes that I would eat according to her "rules" regarding carbohydrate intake etc., but that i would eat REAL food...real butter, real cream, real cheese, coconut oil (saturated fat) and that if after six months she felt that my cholesterol or other indicators were poor, THEN I would eat her low fat crap. The bottom line is that I have a total cholesterol of 147. My good cholesterol is above 40, My triglycerides are well below her target...and I lost 60 pounds in the process. Needless to say. I am still eating REAL food and she has changed her mind about much of what passes for nutrition information. The sad thing is that most nutritionists, who should know better, are taught by the special interests who subsidize the text books etc. Food is one hot political football.
Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now, but I wanted you all to know.
Cowboy.