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Hello there

I have been going to the gym regularly and attended a seminar on healthy living run by the gym. I was told about trans fats and am very confused because they say that when a fat is heated (no matter which fat, ie avocado oil, olive oil, margarine or butter) it turns into a trans fat which is bad for you. I would appreciate if someone could explain this to me so I can understand it.
Many thanks.

Fantus

Hi Fantus,
some trans fatty acids (TFA) do occur in nature but they are the good kind, most TFA are deliberately manufactured by industry to make unstable vegatable oil a lot more stable to increase its shelf life. This is done by bombarding poly-unsaturated oil with hydrogen to saturate more of the bonds. A lot of food sold in shops do have quite a bit of TFA in them, crackers, packets of potato chips etc. Some TFA forms when unsaturated oil is exposed to very high temperatures, such as deep frying. There are several good articles on this and I'll give you the links

http://www.healthcastle.com/trans.shtml

http://www.ifst.org/uploadedfiles/cms/stor...HMENTS/tfas.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat
I hope this helps.
Cheers