Andreas Moritz
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 During this process some of the polyunsaturated fats undergo chemical transformations, which turns them into trans fatty acids (trans fats), often referred to as "hydrogenated vegetable oils." Margarine can contain up to 54 percent of them, vegetable shortening up to 58 percent.
You can detect hydrogenated vegetable oils in foods by reading the food labels. Most processed foods contain them, including breads, crisps, chips, doughnuts, crackers, biscuits, pastries, all baked goods, cake and frosting mixes, baking mixes, frozen dinners, sauces, frozen vegetables, and breakfast cereals. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Background: In the 1980s, many restaurants and food manufacturers switched to using vegetable oils, such as soybean, corn and canola, when the lard, butter and beef fat that were typically used for cooking were found to be high in saturated fat, which increases the risk for obesity and heart disease.
Because these vegetable oils are not stable when heated, manufacturers began using partial hydrogenation to make the oil more solid.
This process extends the shelf life of the oil and of the products made with it. The process also provides the texture, or "mouth-feel," of butter. |
Michael Pollan
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 The American Heart Association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to "modify" various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that "any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed."
And so they were when, in 1973, the FDA (not, note, the Congress that wrote the law) simply repealed the 1938 rule concerning imitation foods. |
Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D.
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 So are many of the omega-6 fats (found in vegetable oils such as corn, saf-flower, and sunflower oil). Even though dietitians have been proclaiming that all cholesterol-free vegetable oils are heart healthy, we beg to differ. There is growing evidence that Americans consume way too much omega-6 and not nearly enough omega-3 fats (found in certain fish as well as walnuts and flaxseed). Because of this imbalance, we suggest you try to limit your intake of omega-6-rich vegetable oils.
Which fats are the superstars? Clearly, olive oil is one of the very best. |
Tori Hudson, N.D.
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 Think of PgEl as the good guy and PgE2 as the bad guy. vegetable oils are rich sources of linoleic acid, and animal fats are the main dietary sources of arachidonic acid; therefore, patients with PMS would be wise to decrease their consumption of animal fats and increase their consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils so that they have more of the good guy, PgEl. A diet high in the other nutrients mentioned would also promote the synthesis of PgEl. We will discuss these more in the nutritional supplement section. |
| Unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature and, therefore, are called oils. Most vegetable oils contain mainly unsaturated fats. These are not as bad for you as saturated fats, and they contain healthy essential fatty acids (discussed later), but they aren't healthy in large quantities. Polyunsaturated fatty acids contain more than one double bond along the fatty acid chain. Replacing saturated fatty acids in the diet with polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) from vegetable oils will lower both total cholesterol and LDL levels and decrease blood pressure.52 However, it may also lower HDL. |
Michael Pollan
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| The American Heart Association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to "modify" various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that "any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed."
And so they were when, in 1973, the FDA (not, note, the Congress that wrote the law) simply repealed the 1938 rule concerning imitation foods. |
Jack Challem
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 Your Daily Values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs:
Calories:
2,000
2,500
Total Fat Less than
65g
80g
Sat Fat Less than
20g
25g
Cholesterol Less than
300mg
300mg
Sodium Less than
2,400mg
2,400mg
Total Carbohydrate
300g
375g
Dietary Fiber
25g
30g
(fully hydrogenated vegetable oils). To identify interesterified oils, you'll have to examine the Ingredients list.
Occasionally, as with the yogurt bar example on the previous page, the Nutrition Facts box does not account for all of the fats. For example, that yogurt bar lists 3. |
| Many sauces have sugar, flour, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.
• Do the salad dressings contain vegetable oil, such as soybean oil, or olive oil? If they are made with vegetable oil, ask for oil-and-vinegar dressing.
• Would you leave the croutons off the salad?
• Would you bring fajitas but hold the tortillas?
• Is the chicken or the fish breaded, battered, or dusted with flour? Ask that the cook not use flour.
Sure Bets When Eating Out
Are you trying to figure out what you can reliably order in a restaurant? |
| They're mostly starch, with a soybean oil-based mayonnaise, and maybe with added sugar and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Stick with more conventional salad ingredients, such as lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Ignore most of the prepared salad dressings and instead ask for a simple oil-and-vinegar dressing. Pass on the array of desserts, again, because of their sugar and trans fats.
Some buffets have a chef carving prime rib, ham, or turkey. If he's stingy and gives you only one slice, and you've already bypassed all the sugary and high-carb offerings, insist on a second slice. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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 CoQ10 is found in many foods, mostly meats, vegetable oils (including soybean), fish, nuts, and some vegetables, but the daily intake of the average person through diet is below 5 mg—a fraction of the amount usually taken in supplement form (30 to 300 mg). It's estimated that only about 25 percent of the CoQ10 in your body is supplied through diet.
Supplements of CoQ10 restore normal levels of this nutrient in people who take statin drugs without reducing the drug's effect on cholesterol levels. |
Mark Lynas
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 Although no one can object to using waste vegetable oils from restaurants as the feedstock for biodiesel, this source could only provide one 380th of the current UK vehicle fleet's use, according to one estimate.
Other biofuel advocates point to waste straw or wood chippings as a way to manufacture ethanol from cellulose, perhaps using genetically engineered enzymes. This seems to hold more potential in terms of carbon displacement, as it could be far more efficient than producing ethanol from food crops. |
Ron Garner
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 The items primitives received in trade were much the same everywhere: a few pieces of clothing, some trinkets, certain vegetable oils, jams and jellies, white flour and sugar. No matter where in the world these primitives lived, ninety percent of the total items they received in trade consisted of white flour and sugar.
These two foods accounted for their severe degeneration and downfall. It was clearly demonstrated that most of the diseases, which developed after adopting these foods, were not caused by genetics, but were caused by environment.26
The two totally unrelated studies by Dr. |
| Hydrogenated oils and trans fats can be found in products such as, margarine, shortening and lard, processed vegetable oils, processed cheese, processed peanut butter, french fries, candies, and cookies.
Supermarket Oils
Most supermarket oils are made from seeds that have been subjected to many destructive processes to produce products that can stay on shelves for long periods of time without spoiling. |
| Polyunsaturated oils, which include vegetable oils like sunflower, safflower, soy, and corn, are the worst to cook with because of the trans fats created during the hydrogenation process. On the other hand, saturated fats such as butter or coconut oil may be used for frying or baking at lower temperatures without harming them. If one must fry food, adding water to the pan or wok keeps the temperature at near 212°f (ioo°c). Better yet, simmer the food in water and then add a good oil at a later stage. |
Jack Challem
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| This sauce almost always contains added sugar, and it may also use wheat flour and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. For these reasons, it's best to avoid ordering ribs.
Good rule of thumb: Stick with steaks seasoned only with salt, pepper, and herbs—no spice blends and no sauces.
Seafood Restaurants****
Restaurants that specialize in fresh fish typically offer some of the healthiest meals. Many of these restaurants bake, pan-fry, or poach the fish listed on the menu, and the chefs are usually willing to prepare fish any way you prefer, such as baked with a little olive oil or butter. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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| Aside from GLA from borage oil, which is used as a supplement (oatmeal is another good source), the omega-6 fatty acids found in meat, milk, vegetable oils, seeds, and nuts are rarely scarce in the standard American diet. In fact, although we need them for good health, most of us are consuming too many.
Most of us eat about twenty times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3s in products like cereals, whole-grain bread, baked goods, fried foods, margarine, and others. |
Elaine Magee
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 They occur naturally at low levels in meat and dairy products, but most of the trans fats in the American diet are formed during a hydrogenation process that renders vegetable oils solid.
Trans fatty acids inflict damage akin to the effects of saturated fats, except trans fats hit you with a double whammy—in addition to raising LDL levels, trans fats decrease your HDL levels at the same time. This is one reason many researchers consider trans fats to be a bigger bad boy than saturated fats. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 If you had the chance, you could walk around barefoot in barrels of it, and take the resultant oil and use it direcdy on your salad (something you can't do with other vegetable oils). Xot refining the oil has the benefit of conserving the vitamins, essential fatty acids, antioxidants, and other nutrients. On the best family-owned farms, the oil is produced in ways similar to those of the ancient Greeks and Romans: Organic olives are picked by hand so as not to damage the skin or pulp; the oil is separated without the use of heat, hot water, or solvents; and it is left unfiltered. |
| Reused (reheated) vegetable oils are really, really bad.
• Trans fats are metabolic poison. The acceptable level in the diet is zero.
Keep these points in mind when you read through the fats and oils that have been selected for inclusion in the "world's healthiest foods." And remember as well that in all cases, unrefined, cold-pressed oils beat the pants off the refined kind, even when it's a "good" oil like olive oil.
Almond Oil
Along with sesame oil, almond oil is probably one of the most popular massage oils, primarily because it smells so darn good. |
| Most people are aware that there are saturated fats— which they've been told to avoid—and have heard vaguely of monounsaturated fats (like those in olive oil) and polyunsaturated fats (like those in vegetable oils, nuts, and fish). Much as I'd love to, I don't have the space here to go into a primer on fats, but I'd like to give you a few bullet points before going into a little more detail about one specific class of polyunsaturated fats called the omega-3s. Here are the take-home points:
• Saturated fat is not always bad. |
| Com-mercial, processed, refined vegetable oils are among the worst foods on the planet, and we've been told they're "healthy" because they are "polyunsaturated." Don't believe it for a minute.
It's not that omega-6s don't do any good. They do. A comprehensive review paper on the relationship of fats to coronary heart disease by Frank Hu, JoAnn Manson, and Walter Willett from Harvard— the folks who ran the Nurses' Health Study—points out that omega-6s do lower LDL ("bad") cholesterol and also improve insulin sensitivity. |
| In addition, most of our restaurants, in response to the fear of "bad" saturated fat, now cook with "healthy" vegetable oils. And cook. And cook. And recook. New research shows that high amounts of a toxin called HNE (4-hydroxy-trans-2-nonenal), with connections to heart disease and neurological disorders, accumulate in vegetable-based cooking oils that are heated or reheated for hours at a time (fast-food restaurant, anyone?). HNE forms in especially high amounts in polyunsaturated oils—including canola, corn, soybean, and sunflower. (It does not arise in saturated fats. |
Michael Pollan
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| In place of those fats, they consumed substantially more vegetable oils, especially in the form of margarine, sales of which outpaced butter for the first time in 1957. Between the end ofWorld War II and 1976 (the year of McGovern's hearings) , per capita consumption of animal fats from all sources dropped from eighty-four pounds to seventy-one, while fats from seed oils approximately doubled. Americans appeared to be moving in the direction of a "prudent diet" and yet, paradoxically, having more heart attacks on it, not fewer. |
Michael T. Murray and Michael R. Lyon
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 A diet composed mostly of saturated fat, animal fatty acids, and trans fatty acids (from margarine, shortening, and other sources of hydroge-nated vegetable oils), and high in cholesterol, results in membranes that are much less fluid in nature than the membranes in a person who consumes optimum levels of unsaturated fatty acids. Without a healthy membrane, cells lose their ability to hold water, vital nutrients, and electrolytes. They also lose their ability to communicate with other cells and be controlled by regulating hormones including insulin. |
Michael Pollan
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| Amplifying the "latest science," they managed to sell her daughter on the virtues of hydrogenated vegetable oils, the ones that we're now learning may be, well, deadly substances.
Sooner or later, everything solid we've been told about the links between our diet and our health seems to get blown away in the gust of the most recent study. Consider the latest findings. |
| You may not think you eat a lot of corn and soybeans, but you do: 75 percent of the vegetable oils in your diet come from soy (representing 20 percent of your daily calories) and more than half of the sweeteners you consume come from corn (representing around 10 percent of daily calories).
Why corn and soy? |
Jack Challem
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| Mice eating fish oils remained the leanest, whereas those eating the most vegetable oils gained the greatest amount of weight, even more than the mice eating saturated fats. Other studies have found that laboratory animals that consumed monounsaturated fats (such as olive oil) were less likely to gain weight, compared with mice that ate the same number of calories in saturated fats.
Human studies show substantial weight-loss benefits with the addition of omega-3 fish oils. Furthermore, the omega-3s improve glucose tolerance and reduce both insulin and triglyceride levels. |
Dr. Edward F. Group III, DC, ND, DACBN
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| Margarine, vegetable oils, shortenings, mayonnaise, and salad dressings are also common places to find soy. Read the labels before buying.
• Be on the lookout for soy when dining at Asian food restaurants. If you are in doubt, always ask whether or not a dish contains soy.
• Read the labels on all food products when you shop.
You may be surprised just how many products contain soy. Products containing lecithin, MSG, or "natural flavors"
How to Eliminate Toxins from Soy (contd.) almost always contain soy. |
Jonny Bowden, M.A., C.N.S.
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 Omega-6s are found mainly in highly processed vegetable oils on your grocer's shelf. Many nutritionists believe that one of the greatest health problems of our time is the imbalance between these two classes of fats in the diet. Our Paleo ancestors consumed omega-6s and omega-3s in a very healthy 1:1 ratio. We currently consume something like a 20:1 ratio in favor of the omega-6s. Those polyunsaturated, highly processed vegetable oils contribute to a wide range of health problems. |
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