Why are trans fats bad for you, what do they do to your body?
In: Chemistry
Well think of fats like a line. The line can be straight because it has hydrogen in it (saturated) or kinked because it is missing a hydrogen (unsaturated, sometimes ‘mono’ (one kink) or more than one (poly)).
The fats you find in nature are all kinked in the same ways, and your body has evolved to handle them. It processes them and uses them for energy or construction.
Trans fats are not kinked the right way. They are kinked backwards and your body can’t handle them well at all. It tries to use them where a normal fat would be and it doesn’t work right. This causes your body to react poorly, causing inflammation, micro trauma to tissues and can cause a lot of issues, like cardiovascular disease, organ damage and so on. Even a couple grams a day can really hurt you. They are not an acceptable food.
There are ‘natural’ trans fats which your body can handle (called conjugated linoleic acids) which don’t do this.
How do they make trans fats? Well they first get liquid, kinked fats missing hydrogens. Then they bubble hot hydrogen gas through it to saturate them with hydrogen and unkink them, making them straight, more densely packed and now solid. Issue is this process makes them half kinked one way (cis) and half kinked the other way (trans). Eating the trans stuff kills you.
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