The Not-So-Funny Health Food Joke:
Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils
How many times have we dutifully read ingredients labels, feeling a product was good because it contained vegetable oils instead of animal fat? And how many times have we felt pious, selecting margarine over butter, for the same reason? How easy has it been for our eyes to skim over that opaque word, "hydrogenated"?
Well, let's take a look at the process that turns vegetable oils into hydrogenated vegetable oils - a process that also creates the ever more notorious "trans fats."
Basically, hydrogenation turns polyunsaturates, which are normally liquid at room temperature, into fats (margarine and shortening) that are solid at room temperature.
Manufacturers begin with the cheapest oils - soy, corn, cottonseed or canola, which are already rancid from the extraction process. The oil is mixed with tiny metal particles, usually nickel oxide, which serve as a catalyst for chemical change. The oil is then subjected to hydrogen gas in a high-pressure, high-temperature reactor - hence the term hydrogenation.
In the following step, soap-like emulsifiers and starch are squeezed into the mixture to give it the desired consistency. Then the oil is again subjected to high temperatures when it is steam-cleaned to remove its unpleasant odor. But that's not the last of the hydrogenation process.
In the case of margarine, for instance, the product's original gray color is removed by bleach. Then dyes and strong flavors are added to make it resemble butter. Finally, the mixture is compressed and packaged in cubes or tubs, and marketed as health food!
Because of the chemical changes of the hydrogenation process, partially hydrogenated margarines and shortenings are much worse for you than the highly refined vegetable oils from which they are made. One of the changes occurs at the molecular level. Under high temperatures, the nickel catalyst causes pairs of hydrogen atoms to change position on the fatty acid chain. One of the paired hydrogen atoms shifts to create what is called the "trans formation," a formation rarely found in nature, from which the term "trans fats" is derived.
These man-made trans fats are toxic, rather than nurturing, to the body. Further, consider that during the period of rapid increase in American heart disease from 1920 to 1960, when the consumption of animal fat actually declined, the consumption of hydrogenated and industrially processed vegetable fats had increased dramatically.
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