Monkeying Around With Trans-Fats

So trans-fats are more dangerous than saturated fats, I'm so glad I've been avoiding them as much as possible for the last 40 years. Once I realized that butter and margarine had the same amount of calories I always ate butter since there is no substitute for good tasting food.

New Scientist Breaking News - Why fast foods are bad, even in moderation: "She fed one group of monkeys a diet where 8% of their daily calories came from trans-fats and another 27% came from other fats. This is comparable to people who eat a lot of fried food, says Kavanagh. A different group of monkeys was fed the same diet, but the trans-fats were substituted for mono-unsaturated fats, found in olive oil, for example.

Both groups ate the same total calories, which were carefully metered to be just enough for subsistence.
Path to diabetes

After six years on the diet, the trans-fat-fed monkeys had gained 7.2% of their body weight, compared to just 1.8% in the unsaturated group. CT scans also revealed that the trans-fat monkeys carried 30% more abdominal fat, which is risk factor for diabetes and heart disease.

“We were shocked. Despite all our enormous efforts to make sure they didn’t gain weight, they still did. And most of that weight ended up on their tummies,” says Kavanagh, who presented her findings at the American Diabetes Association meeting in Washington DC, on Monday. “This is walking them straight down the path to diabetes.”

This is the first study to show such a dramatic result on abdominal fat, adds Dariush Mozaffarian at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, US. “The days of thinking about fats just as calories are over,” he says."

Maybe the trans-fats coat the large intestine preventing the cilia from helping to move it through the system, while destroying the ability of the intestine to digest fats which could lead to a buildup of fat in the abdomen, disturbing the peristaltic action of the digestive system and setting up a feedback loop which encourages the fat to also lay down in the upper abdomen obstructing vital organs. Just a theory.

Besides, have I mentioned how much better butter and olive oil tastes?

Tags: trans-fats, butter, cooking, diabetes, abdominal fat, heart disease