It seems like trans-fatty acids are just unsaturated fats which are converted to saturated fats. Are trans-fatty acids more dangerous than saturated fats that were always saturated or are they the same level of danger? If they are more dangerous to health do people know why?
To briefly summarize, both saturated fat and trans-fatty acids increase the level of LDL (bad cholesterol) in your blood, but trans-fatty acids also lower the level of HDL (good cholesterol.) So yeah, current scientific opinion says they’re more dangerous.
http://www.junkscience.com/nov99/transfat.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,57486,00.html
Not only that but I don’t really trust orgs like the FDA off the bat becaus their statements that obesity leads to 300k which are taken as gospel are based on faulty studies too. So I don’t know what is true.
Damn. I really do want to eat healthy but the fields involving diet and obesity are too political to really trust them off the bat.
Check this out. In addition, the “metabolic disorders” in the NY Times link refers to diabetes.
Wesley, I doubt you’ll find a definitive answer. Since you mentioned your desire to eat healthy, I’ll just throw my opinion out there. In my quest to eat healthy, I try to cut out the noisy conflicting voices, and when given a choice between two “evils”, choose the one that’s closest to the source. So I choose butter instead of margerine. I’d rather have butter instead of those non-trans-fat frankenfoods as well. My cholesterol’s OK, so I assume that I’m making the right choices.
As an aside, I’ve found that data-gathering just doesn’t work in a lot of cases on deciding how to eat healthy. There are just too many conflicting voices. My personal method is just not to overanalyze, stick as close to the source as possible, and include plenty of veggies, while allowing myself a moderate amount of treats. This attitude was formed by going through and recovering from shifting eating disorders and obsession with food and body image. I’m so mad at the media for shoving this information that is so important to many folks into little 30-second spots.
Probably more info than you wanted to know, but I feel your pain in trying to decipher all the crap and paranoia that’s thrown around about nutrition.