Re: Butter vs Margerine

Hydrogenated oils are synthetic food oils not normally present in nature, and are not really safe for human consumption at any level. I highly recommend seeking out product that use lard or butter in place of hydrogenated oils. Not only are they healthier, but they taste better. My personal favorite are sam's club chocolate chip cookies made with butter (found at wal-mart)

It is also highly recommended one bake with a saturated oil, such as butter, lard, coconut, and palm kernel oil, and certainly not with flaxseed or olive oils. These oils are damaged during the baking process, and are harmful for human consumption.

Although I can't prove this, I believe hydrogenated oils are responsable for type 2 diabetes, because excess consumption and absorbtion of these oils into cell walls makes them malfunction and not allow nutrients and chemicals to penetrate the cell wall. This can cause insulin resistant diabetes, where the body produces insulin, but the insulin is not effective.

An article for you:



Summary
Consuming partially hydrogenated oils is like inhaling cigarette smoke. They will kill you -- slowly, over time, but as surely as you breathe. And in the meantime, they will make you fat!
[1700 words]



by Eric Armstrong

Why Fats are Important
The first thing to understand about fats is that the essential fatty acids they contain are truly essential. They are the "active ingredient" in every bodily process you can name:

brain cell function and nervous system activity
hormones and intra-cellular messengers
glandular function and immune system operation
hemoglobin oxygen-transport system
cell wall function:
passing oxygen into the cell
passing nutrients into the cell
keeping foreign bodies out of the cell
digestive-tract operation
assimilating nutrients
blocking out allergens
In short, the essential fatty acids (contained mostly in polyunsaturated oils) are the most important nutrients there are -- more important than vitamins, minerals, or even proteins. Because, without them, there is no life. They are the substance and foundation of life energy.

What is Hydrogenation?
Hydrogenation is the process of heating an oil and passing hyrdrogen bubbles through it. The fatty acids in the oil then acquire some of the hydrogen, which makes it more dense. If you fully hydrogenate, you create a solid (a fat) out of the oil. But if you stop part way, you a semi-solid partially hydrogenated oil that has a consistency like butter, only its a lot cheaper.

Because of that consistency, and because it is cheap, it is a big favorite as a butter-substitute among "food" producers. It gives their products a richer flavor and texture, but doesn't cost near as much as it would to add butter.

What's Wrong with Hydrogenation?
Unlike butter, hydrogenated oils contain high levels of trans fats. A trans fat is an otherwise normal fatty acid that has been "transmogrified", by high-heat processing of a free oil. The fatty acids can be double-linked, cross-linked, bond-shifted, twisted, or messed up in a variety of other ways.

The problem with trans fats is that while the "business end" (the chemically active part) is messed up, the "anchor end" (the part that is attached to the cell wall) is unchanged. So they take up their position in the cell wall, like a guard on the fortress wall. But like a bad guard, they don't do their job! They let foreign invaders pass unchallenged, and they stop supplies at the gates instead of letting them in.

In short, trans fats are poisons, just like arsenic or cyanide. They interfere with the metabolic processes of life by taking the place of a natural substance that performs a critical function. And that is the definition of a poison. Your body has no defense against them, because they never even existed in our two billion years of evolution -- so we've never had the need or the opportunity to evolve a defense against them.

Partially Hydrogenated Oils Make You Fat!
Partially hydrogenated oils will not only kill you in the long term by producing diseases like multiple sclerosis and allergies that lead to arthritis, but in the meantime they will make you fat!

It's not like you have any choice in the matter. Remember that the essential fatty acids are vital to every metabolic function in your body. You will get the quantity of essential fatty acids that you need to sustain life, no matter what. You will not stop being hungry until you do.

If you are consuming lots of saturated fats, you really have no choice but to become fat, because saturated fats contain only small quantities of the polyunsaturated fats that contain the essential fatty acids you need. The key to being thin, then, is to consume foods containing large amounts of polyunsaturated oils. (Those foods include fish, olives, nuts, and egg yolks.) Over the long term, those foods remove your sense of hunger.

Note:
The difference between a "fat" and an "oil" is temperature. A "fat" is a lipid that is solid at room temperature. An "oil" is one that is liquid at room temperature. Both are lipids (or "oil/fat"). Change the temperature, and you can convert an oil into a fat, or vice versa.

Partially hydrogenated oils make you gain weight the same way that saturated fats do -- by making you consume even more fat to get the the essential fatty acids you need. But partially hydrogenated fats are even worse. Not only do they produce disease over they long term, but they interfere with the body's ability to ingest and utilize the good fats!

Picture it like this. The trans fats are now the guards along the watchtower. The essential fatty acids (the support troops) are waiting outside to get into the fort (the cell), so they can be distributed along the watchtower (the cell wall). But the guards won't let them in! So they have to find someplace to stay in town. Over time, more and more troops are finding lodging in town. So new houses (fat cells) have to built to keep them in. The town grows more and more swelled with troops (fat), and it gets bigger and bigger (fatter). It's not a pretty picture at all, when you realize that the town is your belly, buns, face, and neck.

Avoiding Hydrogenation
When you start reading food labels, it is astonishing how many products you will find that contain partially hydrogenated oils. In the chips aisle, there are maybe two brands that don't: Lay's Classic Potato Chips (not their other brands), and Laura Scudders chips. Most every other package on the shelf does.

Then there are the cookies and crackers. Most every single one does. About the only cookie that doesn't is Paul Neuman's fig newtons. Among peanut butters, the all-natural brands (Adams and Laura Scudders) don't. All the rest seem to.

Even some items on the "health food" shelf, like Tigers Milk bars, contain partially hydrogenated oils. Can you imagine that?? A product marketed as a "health food" that contains partially hydrogenated oils? If they want to market it as a candy bar, fine. Caveat emptor. But to market it as a health food calls for a class action lawsuit on the basis of false advertising.

The more labels you read, the more astonished you will be at the variety and number of places that this insidious little killer shows up. Do read the labels. Do recoil in disgust, and do throw the product back on the shelf -- or throw it on the floor, where it belongs.

Deep-Fried Foods: The Ultimate Killer
Fortunately, this information is beginning to penetrate the public consciousness. Recently, a news special covered the subject. The reporter got some of the details wrong, but the general message was right on the money. And the one surprising tidbit of information in the report was the fact that most of the deep-fried foods served in fast food joints are fried in partially hydrogenated oils!

Now, deep frying all by itself is pretty bad. After all, you are applying a lot of heat. But if that heat is applied to a saturated fat, there is a limit to how much harm it can do. A saturated fat doesn't have a "business end". There is no part of it that is chemically active. It's inert. Your body can burn it for fuel, but it can't use it to carry out any of your metabolic processes.

But because a saturated fat is inert, it can't be hurt much by heat. It's not all that good for you, but it's not terrible either. So if you're going to fry, fry in a fully saturated fat like lard, or coconut oil. Or, best of all, use butter! Butter is the shortest saturated fat there is. So, of all the saturated fats, it is the one that is most easily burned for fuel. And it tastes fantastic. It's so good, in fact, that you don't even need to use very much to get a lot of flavor. So if you are frying something up at home, use butter! You'll get gourmet-quality food that is also healthy.

For commercial deep frying, though, butter is prohibitively expensive. Still, were things fried in lard or coconut oil, they wouldn't be great, but they wouldn't be terrible. But that sounds bad, so one "healthy" Mexican restaurant advertised that they fried in vegetable oil. Admittedly, that's a lot better than partially hydrogenated oil. And if its relatively low heat frying (like in a frying pan), its probably not too bad. But you wouldn't want to subject the unsaturated fatty acids contained in a vegetable oil to the high heat of a deep frying vat. The result would be the same kind of trans fats that you get in the hydrogenation process!

But the absolute worst has to be the fast-food chains, who almost uniformly do their deep frying in cheap, deadly partially hydrogenated oil. Any fats that escaped being transmogrified in the hydrogenation process are now subjected to the deep frying process. It's a miracle that any of the unstaturated fats escape being transmogrified, if any of them do.

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