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Old 04-13-2006, 10:19 AM   #1  
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Default More reasons to avoid fast food

(CBS) CHICAGO Some fast food chains are doing more than super-sizing their portions. They’re super-sizing the fat.

Researchers found that where you eat can be just as risky to your health as what you eat.

Unhealthy fast food fat is highest in the United States because Americans prefer food with more taste, companies say.

CBS 2’s Mike Parker explains why that’s dangerous.

If you’re concerned about your health, you might want to think twice about those fries. A Danish study comparing the fats in McDonald’s fries in the United States with the fries in Europe finds the U.S. products much higher in artery-clogging trans fat.

Some diners are getting the message.

“Who wants a heart attack? I mean, health is first,” one man said.

The study says eating just 5 grams of trans fat a day increases your risk of a heart attack by 25 percent.

Says a Danish cardiologist: “It’s a metabolic poison.”

“Trans fat, let me just say, has been associated with raising bad cholesterol and lowering the good cholesterol,” registered dietician Roberta Clarke Jenero said.

The study finds that KFC chicken is also high in trans fat. KFC says it bows to taste and uses the same partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil that McDonald’s used to cook domestic fries.

“Everytime I get my kids a happy meal, they never eat the fries. I don’t know why,” said one father.

Maybe the kids are on to something.

Trans fat is not only in fries and chicken, but tortilla chips, margarine and microwave popcorn.
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Old 04-13-2006, 10:38 AM   #2  
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I have to say that I never am in the mood for fries anymore. They just don't taste good. I don't know if it's because of changes in me or in changes in how they are prepared . . . or both. I'll take a full-flavored, baked potato any day of the week.
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Old 04-13-2006, 10:48 AM   #3  
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The study says eating just 5 grams of trans fat a day increases your risk of a heart attack by 25 percent.
This part really struck me...I mean, 5 grams sounds like such a tiny amount! Someone on a thread recently mistakenly thought that saturated and trans fats were the same thing--now I can use this to show just how much worse trans fats really are!
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Old 04-13-2006, 11:05 AM   #4  
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Originally Posted by Ms. Shapen
I have to say that I never am in the mood for fries anymore. They just don't taste good. I don't know if it's because of changes in me or in changes in how they are prepared . . . or both. I'll take a full-flavored, baked potato any day of the week.
Yep, that or homemade fries. I make really yummy ones. I slice potatoes up into strips or whatever size we want them, then toss them with salt & pepper, whatever spices we're in the mood for, and a little bit of parmesan cheese. Spray them with cooking spray (I never use oil or butter) and put them in the oven until crispy.

Yummy!
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Old 04-13-2006, 11:07 AM   #5  
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This part really struck me...I mean, 5 grams sounds like such a tiny amount!
Yes it does. And although I watch fats very closely, I know I sometimes still get trans fats in certain foods. Probably not as much as I used to, though, for two reasons....

1) I always read labels. If partially hydrogenated oils are among the first 3-5 ingredients, I put it back on the shelf.

2) Many food companies are now removing the trans fat from their products.
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Old 04-13-2006, 11:39 AM   #6  
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to be honest, "metabolic poison" could be anything if you consume it in large amounts. I'd still eat french fries once in a blue moon, but I can't say that it's kill me It's strange, i felt the tone of this article made trans fats sound the the plague, when realistically, the damage done with trans fats is just the same as it would occur in saturated fats. The reaosn by it would be so is because trans and saturated still possess a similar chemical structure, each fatty acid tail hanging off the glyerol head as a straight chain. The only time any fat would differ, is if it had a "cis" double bond like unsaturated fats. Because these do not agreggate due to electrostatic repulsion, they are more fluid, and thus do not clog easily. What I find strange is that NO ON attacks saturated fats as much as they do trans fats, even though both have the same effect.
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Old 04-13-2006, 12:19 PM   #7  
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What I find strange is that NO ON attacks saturated fats as much as they do trans fats, even though both have the same effect.
I think the reason for this is two-fold:
  1. 5g of any type of fat is a VERY small amount. 5g of saturated fat, from my understanding, does not have as strong an adverse affect on your health as does 5g of trans fat. Saturated fat occurs naturally in animal products, whereas trans fats are very seldom found in nature, so humans have been eating saturated fats for thousands of years, so I would assume our bodies are more capable of dealing with them appropriately. Also, from my reading on the topic, saturated fats and trans fats do both increase your bad (LDL) cholesterol, but trans fats ALSO decrease your good (HDL) cholesterol, whereas saturated fats do not.
  2. Trans fats are more focused on recently, I believe, because they are a newer, man-made fat (VERY few trans fats occur naturally), and recent studies have been showing just how harmful they are. They used to not even be listed on food labels, and almost no one knew what "hydrogenized" meant until it became a big media thing.
I hope that all made sense
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Old 04-13-2006, 12:38 PM   #8  
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[/LIST]I hope that all made sense
Made sense to me

I don't freak out, per se, over the trans fat thing. I know I ingest it in certain foods, but I don't think it's enough to really worry about. I keep saturated fats VERY low and most of the products I buy are trans-fat free. But we have to keep in mind that just because a product claims "0 trans fat", it doesn't mean there's none in there at all. With some products it just means that it's such a trivial amount in that product that it doesn't really add up to anything and/or it doesn't 'break' the trans fat limits on how much the product contains to be considered a harmful amount.

Jeez, did THAT make any sense?

lol
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Old 04-13-2006, 12:52 PM   #9  
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Jeez, did THAT make any sense?

lol
haha, yup! Legally, a product can say it has 0 trans fats if it has less than .5g per serving. An example off the top of my head if Fat Free Cool Whip. It says it has 0 trans fats, but hydrogenized oil is listed right in the ingredients. It could have .49g per serving (which is only like 2 T), or it could have .01...the world may never know
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Old 04-13-2006, 01:02 PM   #10  
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since you guys, obviously, know what you are talking about, can you list types of fooods that contain trans fats??? I'm not too smart when it comes to these types of things. thanks!
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Old 04-13-2006, 01:15 PM   #11  
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  • most margarines and some butters found in solid form (tubs and sticks)--used to make the fat "solid" to hold the shape
  • peanut butter--used to keep the oil from separating
  • some chips and crackers
If you check the ingredients on the label, and you see the word "hydrogenized," then that food contains trans fats. If it is more than .5g per serving, it will be listed on the nutritional information (unless the package is from prior to January 2006, which is when all packaging was required to comply). If it is less than .5g, it may be listed as 0, but if it's in the ingredients, then it's in there somewhere!
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Old 04-13-2006, 03:00 PM   #12  
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Also cakes, cookies and most baked goods. Some frozen foods. Shortening, potato chips, and anything deep-fried in 'bad' oils. Some microwave poprcorns have trans fats, some don't. Orville Redenbacher products have supposedly removed the bad fats.
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Old 04-13-2006, 03:47 PM   #13  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jillybean720
I think the reason for this is two-fold:
  1. 5g of any type of fat is a VERY small amount. 5g of saturated fat, from my understanding, does not have as strong an adverse affect on your health as does 5g of trans fat. Saturated fat occurs naturally in animal products, whereas trans fats are very seldom found in nature, so humans have been eating saturated fats for thousands of years, so I would assume our bodies are more capable of dealing with them appropriately. Also, from my reading on the topic, saturated fats and trans fats do both increase your bad (LDL) cholesterol, but trans fats ALSO decrease your good (HDL) cholesterol, whereas saturated fats do not.
  2. Trans fats are more focused on recently, I believe, because they are a newer, man-made fat (VERY few trans fats occur naturally), and recent studies have been showing just how harmful they are. They used to not even be listed on food labels, and almost no one knew what "hydrogenized" meant until it became a big media thing.
I hope that all made sense

scientifically, that claim is FALSE, I'm not saying the article is wrong, but the idea that 5g of trans fat vs 5 grams of saturated fats. If you find all the articles in the NIH and Pubmed, you'll see that many scientists diagree that trans fats are "more dangerous" than saturated fats. The man made fat is a TRANS double bond. IT produces a straight linear chain and exibits the same effects as regular SATURATED carbon chains. It has NOT been proven to be more harmful than saturated fats- that was a hype only because trans seemed "bad" in comparison to natural endogenous materials such as saturated fat from animals. (all the media hypes on the idea of man made materials, like emulsifiers and whatnot- no one ever bothers to even observe "natural" occuring compounds) ANyone whose taken biochemistry or organic chemistry in college would've realized this.


Saturated fats can also decrease HDL. There are many articles on this too.
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Old 04-13-2006, 03:54 PM   #14  
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Well, I watch fats all the way around, so I'm not particularly worried about it. I try not to eat too many processed foods anyway, although I don't avoid them completely. Like I've said in another post somewhere, I eat 90% healthy and 10% not-so-healthy. And the 10% is usually something like ice cream, the occasional piece of candy or a cookie, the rare munchies from Taco Bell, maybe a small handful of chips and a hot dog at a BBQ, things like that. Oh, and I've also got to have my occasional piece of fried chicken. I'm crazy about that stuff.

Other than that, I don't really think I eat enough 'junk' to worry about the effects of trans and saturated fats. I don't really even TRY to keep my fats low, that's just the way it ends up because of the way I eat.
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Old 04-14-2006, 11:19 AM   #15  
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I don't really even TRY to keep my fats low, that's just the way it ends up because of the way I eat.
Same here My total fat percentage is sometimes even below 20 (I've seen it as low as 13, I believe), and it's not because I'm purposely eating low-fat...it just sort of happens.

veggie--I am not a scientist. I can read, though, and I can read the information presented by actual scientific trials such as this (an article for which I found the abstract on PubMed, full text available through nutrition.org):
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/127/3/514S
I won't use big words and discuss bonds or chains, but I will say that almost everything I've read actually says that saturated fats increase BOTH LDL and HDL, whereas trans fats increase LDL and decrease HDL (I found nothing current that said that saturated fats decrease HDL--only older articles that included trans fats AS saturated fats without distinguishing between the two). Forgive me for siding with the scientific studies
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