Trans-Fats Transforming Burger Bellies

Sorry for the silly alliteration, but I’m the author, so I get to choose the title.

Choices, it seems, make a big difference in whether we win or lose the Battle of the Bulge, too. We all know that trans fats should be avoided, but every once in a while it’s good to kick around the results of a nice double-blind study that quantifies just how bad they really are. Kylie Kavanagh and her colleagues at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, spent six years doing just that.

In case you haven’t heard, trans fats are “hydrogenated” oils that are modified at high-temperature so as to render them nearly indestructible. Trans fats are esteemed by food manufacturers because they extend the shelf life of food by about a factor of one-bahzillion. Purchase a new bag of cookies containing trans fats and you’ll be surprised (maybe) to learn that the product is “best if enjoyed” sometime between now and three years from now.

Just for fun, bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies and seal them up in an air-tight, zip-lock plastic bag and set them on a shelf for three years. On their third anniversary, open the bag and enjoy! What a treat! These rock-hard lumps of penicillin and other organic material will hardly resemble what you baked three years before. The cause of this metamorphosis from treat to trick is something known as “oxidation”. It’s the same process that turns fruit brown and an old car into a rust-bucket. It is entropy… It is one of the universal laws. So what happens when we break a universal law? We get fat.

Hydrogenating fat not only makes it last longer, it also makes it harder for the body to dispose of. It really makes sense, if you think about it. We don’t eat plastic because we were not designed to metabolize it. We weren’t designed to metabolize trans fat, either. Okay, so back to the study.

Ms. Kavanaugh and her team set out to study the effects of trans fat on the body. They did two things that I really applaud them for… First of all, they ran the study over a six-year period. This is a significant period of time, and one that we can relate to as we look back in time ourselves. We don’t gain weight or lose weight quickly. It happens over time. Secondly, she used quantities that make sense. So often, scientists will measure an effect of something by feeding lab animals the human equivalent of tons of the item being studied.

In this study performed on monkeys, Kavanaugh fed both groups a diet that consisted of just enough calories to sustain them, 35% of which came from fats. In the first group, the fats were 8% trans fats and the other 27% were from mono-unsaturated fats. The second group’s diet consisted of entirely mono-unsaturated fats (no trans fat at all.) The reason for the ratio was to mimic the amount of fat, and type of fat, that would be consumed by someone who ate a good deal of fried food.

The results were amazing, but not surprising. The trans fat group of monkeys had gained 7.2% of their body weight in six short years, while the non-trans fat group had gained only 1.8%. In addition, the trans fat group of monkeys had 30% more belly fat than the non-trans fat group, as shown by CT scan. Belly fat has been shown to be a strong indicator for diabetes and heart disease.

Studies like this will help those of us fighting the Battle of the Bulge to be better equiped to deal with our struggles. But not only that, they increase overall consumer awareness, which results in change. In January 2006, US foodmakers were told to begin to report all trans fat content on food labels. In an even bigger move, fast food chain Wendy’s announced that it will soon be removing all trans fats from their entire menu, at least in the US and Canada.

Here’s to the hope that this is a trend that will continue across the entire industry and around the world!

Michael Callen is the author of the Weekly Weightloss Tips Newsletter (http://www.weeklyweightlosstips.com) and the Chief Technology Officer for WellnessPartners.com (http://www.WellnessPartners.com), an online retailer of dozens of health and wellness products such as conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), r+ alpha lipoic acid (R+ ALA), and green tea extract.

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