Fats, Oils and Margarine
From Truth Exposed
Contents |
Vegetable Oils
The last fifty years have seen a huge increase in the consumption of processed vegetable oils, and a concurrent decline in the consumption of animal fats. These oils look clean and bright on the grocer’s shelves, but a description of vegetable oil processing reveals the true nature of these products.
Oil processing begins with the extraction of crude vegetable oils from the seeds, a process that requires high temperatures and pressures, and often involves a hexane solvent. The steps involved in processing include caustic refining, bleaching, deodorizing, filtering and removing saturates to make the oils more liquid. Most of these steps involve heat and produce toxic breakdown products known as free radicals, which as you may know, are a prime cause of cancer. These vegetable oils, which look clean and have no smell, are actually completely denatured and carcinogenic.
The oils undergo a process called “partial hydrogenation” or depending on the purpose of the product, “full hydrogenation” which rearranges the hydrogen atoms in an unsaturated fatty acid to produce a fat that is solid at room temperature. The molecules in this new product are now closer to cellulose or plastic than to oil. In fact hydrogenated oil is only one molecule away from being plastic. When you eat anything containing this material, just as the oil is now thicker and more viscous (dense), so too does your blood become thicker and more viscous right along with it. The heart now has to work so much harder to pump blood throughout the system. This is one of the major ways that consuming hydrogenated oils contributes to high blood pressure.
As you can imagine, this thicker blood with this gummy substance flowing with it can easily lodge in the arteries and build up the arterial plaque. It doesn't take anywhere near as much time as you may think for this to occur. Some studies have shown that negative health effects of eating processed foods occur within only minutes of consuming such foods.
This thicker blood, which has a harder time pumping through the arteries, also has a much harder time getting up to the brain. Hydrogenated oils can slow the micro circulation of blood through the brain further causing various emotional and physical ailments such an Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and ADHD just to name a few. Remember also that one of the metals sometimes used in the hydrogenation process is aluminum, which more and more studies are now linking to Alzheimer's disease.
Margarine
Manufacturers cannot use liquid oils in baked goods or frying and they are not spreadable. So to harden the liquid vegetable oils to make margarine and shortening, the oils are put through a process called partial hydrogenation.
To make margarine or shortening:
- First the oil is extracted from the seeds using high temperature and pressure and the remaining fraction of oil is removed with hexane solvents.
- Then extracted the oils are steam cleaned, a process that removes all the vitamins and anti-oxidants, but of course, the solvents and the pesticides remain.
- These oils are then mixed with a Nickel or Aluminum catalyst and put into a huge high-pressure, high-temperature reactor.
- What goes into the reactor is a liquid, but what comes out of that reactor is a semi-solid that looks like grey cottage cheese and smells terrible.
- Emulsifiers are mixed in to smooth out the lumps.
- The product is then steam cleaned a second time to get rid of the horrible smell.
- Then it is bleached to get rid of the grey color. At this point, the product can be used as vegetable shortening.
To make margarine, artificial flavors are added as well as synthetic vitamins. You may be comforted to know that manufacturers are not allowed to add a synthetic color to margarine. So natural colorings such as Annatto or Carotene (from carrots) are used to mimic the color of butter. The manufacturers are however allowed to use synthetic aromas to mimic butter, which of course, they do. Finally it gets packaged in blocks and tubs.
Advertising promotes this garbage as a health food.
Trans Fats in Hydrogenated Oils
It’s going to get a little more scientific here, but stick with me, it’s not for too long. Natural saturated fatty acids are straight molecules that pack together easily so they tend to be solid at room temperature. In a saturated fatty acid, each carbon atom is joined to two hydrogen atoms. The hydrogen atoms are arranged in pairs, thus creating electron clouds. Our cell membranes are composed of billions of fatty acids; chemical reactions occur in the cell membranes at sites where two hydrogen molecules form electron clouds.
Natural unsaturated fatty acids, such as oleic acid, tend to be liquid at room temperature. They have two or more hydrogen atoms missing where the carbons are double bonded together, but the remaining hydrogen atoms at the double bond are paired on the same side—called the cis configuration—forming an electron cloud where reactions can take place in the cell membrane.
During the process of partial hydrogenation, one of the hydrogen atoms in a pair is moved to the other side of the molecule, forming a trans fatty acid, such as elaidic acid—trans means "across." This causes the molecules to straighten out so that they pack together easily and form a solid fat at room temperature. Unfortunately, when these trans fatty acids are incorporated into the cell membrane, they are missing the hydrogen pairs needed for chemical reactions to occur. The result is dysfunction on the cellular level.
All of the margarines, shortenings, spreads, even low-trans spreads contain trans fats plus many other artificial ingredients. In the groceries stores there is just a little bit of space for the butter because all the high-profit margarine foods have totally invaded the food supply. Virtually all packaged or processed foods contain trans fatty acids. They're in all the chips and crackers, and they now use them for french fries. The industry used to fry the fries in beef tallow, which is a very safe fat, and gave a little extra profit for the cattlemen, but they have lost that market now. Today French fries are fried in partially hydrogenated soybean oil. It used to be that when you made desserts for your kids, at least they contained butter, eggs, cream and nuts and other healthy ingredients--all good wholesome foods. Now the industry can imitate the butter, eggs and cream, so most desserts end up being mostly sugar, partially hydrogenated oils and a long list of artificial ingredients.
Problems with Hydrogenated Oils
Many, many diseases have been associated with the consumption of trans fatty acids, such as heart disease, cancer, digestive disorders and degeneration of joints and tendons. Trans fats are associated with auto-immune disease, skin problems, growth problems in children and learning disabilities. The only reason that we are eating this stuff is because we have been told that the competing fats and oils such as butter, lard, tallow etc. are bad for us and cause heart disease. This message is nothing but industry propaganda to get us to buy more profitable substitutes.
Tips to Avoid Hydrogenated Oils
To help avoid hydrogenated oils, most of your foods should be raw and as close to their natural state as possible. This means more fruits and vegetables including organic local meats being as fresh as possible. The more real foods from nature you eat, the less packaged and processed foods you'll consume. It's the packaged and processed foods that are most likely to be made with hydrogenated oils to help increase their shelf life. This really means a change in the way that we think about food and what we classify as food. True foods are those from nature, in their natural pristine state, not those that come out of a factory or a box. You can't rely on the government or any other source to tell you what is ok to put into you or your families body. It absolutely means becoming a label reader and checking everything you buy that's packaged and processed. You especially want to make sure that hydrogenated oils and other negative ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup are not listed as ingredients, even on packages that have the word "organic" on the box. Just because a package has the word organic on the label doesn't mean that it's necessarily a healthy food. Packaged and processed foods with organic on the box would really be considered "less damaging" but not necessarily truly healthy. To be truly healthy means that a food is full of enzymes and phytonutrients with all their natural vitamins and minerals present. Enzymes are actually more important than any vitamin, mineral or other nutrient since all processes that occur in the body must have sufficient supplies of enzymes to do their job. Foods that have had their enzymes destroyed are automatically classified as "dead foods" Hydrogenated oils are absolutely one of the worst ingredients being put into the modern food supply today for the many reasons stated. This is an ingredient that must be avoided at all costs. This is especially important if you're looking to recover your health in any form.