I will never forgive the diet industry for telling me potatoes were bad for me, once I stopped caring about fad shit and just eating at a deficit (including at least one baked potato a day) the pounds absolutely melted off.
It got me thinking about other foods that the government / diet companies have said are bad. Were trans fats actually a big problem? The ban certainly hasn’t done much for the obesity epidemic.
In: Other
Yup. Trans fats increase bad cholesterol and lower good. That means plaque buildup in your arteries and heart disease.
The issue is you are conflating overall health and weight.
You can lose weight with unhealthy food, when we talk about healthy food we usually mean cardio health.
Nothing you eat is going to kill you immediately. But some things are worse than others, and Trans fats are the worst lipids. You can eat less of them and still be okay, but you really want to be leaning into the other kinds of fats.
Trans fats are legitimately bad. They won’t kill you, but there isn’t any mechanism for them to be used by our metabolism so they just get in the way and cause problems.
Edit: Apparently some people need clarification. Trans fats definitely kill you in the long term. I figured my original explanation was clear enough since anything that causes health problems also chronically kills but maybe someone can give me a counter example. It just won’t kill you like a bullet.
Trans-fats differ on a molecular level from their naturally-occurring counterparts, “cis-fats.” Unlike cis-fats, which occur in nature, trans-fat molecules have the same components but are arranged slightly differently. This means that our bodies basically don’t know what to do with trans fats, they’re less compatible with our cells than cis-fats because we didn’t evolve to consume them.
So trans-fats are disproportionately harmful compared to normal fats because our bodies let them accumulate. We can’t burn them for energy, so they pile up in our blood stream as cholesterol.
Fats in general are not bad as long as they’re consumed in moderation. But trans-fats are dangerous EVEN in moderation, because basically any amount of trans-fat is too much.
Trans fats are suuuper bad, basically toxic. here is a good explaination why, https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/60735/what-makes-trans-fats-more-harmful-than-saturated-ones but the jist is, trans fats are kinda half way between an oil like fat, and a butter like fat. there are 2 configurations a fat like this can be, cis or trans, cis is fine for you, but trans has some really nasty properties where the body THINKS it can use it in a particular way, but it wont actually properly function.
and here is a good video on the structure of fats
>I will never forgive the diet industry for telling me potatoes were bad for me
Who ever said that? I have heard *fried* potatoes are bad for you, which they are.
Trans fats are actually pretty bad for you, mostly because they’re artificial and therefore not something the body evolved to handle in large amounts. But the risk doesn’t have that much to do with obesity; it’s more about heart disease.
Naturally occurring fats are a mixture of “saturated fatty acids” (which tend to be solid at room temperature; butter and coconut oil have lots of saturated fat) and “cis-unsaturated fatty acids” (which tend to be liquid at room temperature; cooking oil has lots of unsaturated fat). Trans fat, more formally “trans-unsaturated fatty acids”, do exist naturally in food but only in small amounts.
In the early 1900s, a process called hydrogenation was invented that would convert unsaturated fat to saturated fat. This seemed great, since it allowed cheap oils to be turned into fat that stays solid at room temperature. But a side effect is that some of the cis-unsaturated fat is turned into trans-unsaturated fat (“trans fat”), which is unsaturated but kind of behaves like saturated fat in food. For a long time people thought this was a good thing, since conventional wisdom was that unsaturated fat is better for you than saturated fat. So trans fat seemed like a good thing: you get fat that is solid at room temperature like saturated fat while still technically being unsaturated!
Eventually more studies were done on the effects of trans fats, and scientists realized that eating lots of trans fat strongly increases the risk of heart disease, and weakly increases the risk of various other diseases like obesity. The body can handle small amounts ok, but not the larger amounts that people who eat a lot of junk food with trans fats would get.
So you’re right, getting rid of trans fats hasn’t done much for the obesity epidemic, but it also wasn’t really expected to help much with that.
EDIT: fixed mistake as pointed out by /u/tamebeverage
Unsaturated fats are better than saturated fat, and trans fats are a subcategory of saturated fat that’s worse than usual. Unsaturated fats are things like fish, avocado, and olive oil. Saturated fats are things like red meat, dairy, and coconut oil. Trans fats are things like margarine, pastries, and fried food.
Fat(ty acid)s are broken down for energy, building cell walls, and maintaining cell function. They are absolutely necessary for survival just like carbs are. The way we categorize them and determine which ones are better for us is based off the molecular structure of the fatty acid. The names themselves refer to whether the carbon chain that makes up the fatty acid is at full capacity with hydrogen bonds (saturated) or if there are ‘gaps’ (unsaturated).
To be converted into energy and building components, the fatty acid needs to be broken down. Unsaturated fats are the easiest to do this because they’re already “bent” and that bend makes for an easy break point. Saturated fats are straight, making it more difficult for the enzymes to find a good breaking point. Trans fats aren’t just straight, they’re reinforced with a double bond. The harder it is to break a molecule down, the longer it just sits there in the body waiting its turn, taking up space.
If you want to read into the biology side of it, three terms that’ll help in searches is *lipids, triglycerides,* and *catabolism*.
>The ban certainly hasn’t done much for the obesity epidemic
Yeah and the seat belt industry has made horrible progress towards more energy efficient homes.
Trans fats are actually bad for you, at least in dietary significant quantities. Their structure makes them do certain chemical things that natural (cis) fats do not do. That’s why they stay liquid at lower temperature. They’re actually, chemically different in a way that is extremely rare in nature (e.g. one cup of ordinary 2% cow’s milk contains about 0.2g of trans fats.)
Getting rid of trans fats doesn’t make people stop eating empty calories (whether from fatty foods or anything else.) It simply means they’re eating *less-bad* empty calories. Overall health is more than just fat intake.
Latest Answers