In the United States, typical French fries have about 40 percent trans fat, and many cookies and crackers range from 30 to 50 percent trans fat. Doughnuts have approximately 35 percent trans fatty acids. A couple of the worst offenders are found in many kitchens-stick margarine and Crisco®.

Trans fatty acid is created when the molecular structure of a vegetable oil is altered to a hardened form found in margarine or shortening. Because trans fat increases the shelf life of foods, it’s most commonly found in restaurant foods, fast foods (French fries, fried chicken, and chicken nuggets), snack food, packaged bakery products (cookies, crackers, donuts, and cakes), microwave popcorn, potato chips, peanut butters, and salad dressings.

Jacob didn’t know that fries have so much trans fat!

Trans fat is far worse than natural saturated fat ever could be. The production process of injecting liquid fats with hydrogen gas converts them into indigestible trans fatty acids. Trans fat can’t be metabolized in the human body, because they don’t release any helpful mediator. Their shape keeps them from being recognized by enzymes. In fact, trans fat has a half life of 51 days. That means three months after consuming trans fat, you’re body is still dealing with it.

Trans fat molecules are absorbed into your cells, compromising the cell’s metabolism. Trans fat lowers the HDL (good cholesterol) and increases the LDL (bad cholesterol), leading to heart disease. In pregnant women, trans fat, like alcohol, drugs, carbon monoxide from cigarette smoke, and pesticides, pass through the placenta to the baby, affecting the baby’s metabolism in direct proportion to the amount ingested by the mother. In addition, there’s a correlation between trans fat and Type 2 Diabetes. To make matters worse, trans fat inhibits the absorption of vitamin K (vital for bone growth). Trans fat is a toxin interfering with all membrane function.

Eating Fried Food Out Is Dangerous To Health
Eating out can be more of a challenge than reading food labels. Now it’s required for food manufactures to list on nutrition labels over a half a gram of trans fat. Unfortunately, picky eaters love fast food! Five small chicken nuggets from a fast food chain may contain between two and four grams of trans fat. A large order (six ounces) of McDonald’s® French fries contains a whopping eight grams of trans fat!

Many restaurants are moving away from trans fat, even McDonalds says they no longer use trans fat. Are we any better off? Not really. Restaurants usually use inferior, cheap vegetables oils. A healthy oil will go rancid. Then an inferior oil is used for frying , it’ reused for a week. It’s used over and over again, until it turns to sludge. Trans fat is created when a vegetable oil is overheated. So, in effect, a restaurant may start with a more healthy oil, but it ends up with a trans fat. When you eat out AVIOD all fried foods.

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It’d been a while since I last ate at a salad and soup restaurant. Dick, my husband and I used to enjoy eating at Sweet Tomatoes, another salad/soup restaurant in our area. The choices are numerous and you can eat as much as you like. My mom was a picky eater and loved soup and salad restaurants, because she could choose whatever she wanted to try and if she didn’t like it, she could go back for something else.

Grace and Elijah are happy to hear
some restaurants are trans fat free.

I stopped eating at salad and soup restaurants, when I read the information on the additives, especially trans fat, that were found in their food items. I was surprised when I saw trans fats were in more than bakery products. They were in things you wouldn’t normally expect, like creamed soups. So, I was happy to see that Souper Salad posted signs stating they were “trans fat free.”

Later, I checked out the Souper Salad website and contacted their “food scientist” (I wasn’t sure what a food scientist is, so I checked it out online. A food scientist works in research and development of food processing companies. They analyze food content.), just to be sure. This is the reply I received from Karen Schroeder, their food scientist:

“Regarding fats:
Gingerbread uses palm oil—0 trans fat
Blueberry bread uses palm oil—0 trans fat
Bread-sticks uses soybean oil—0 trans fat
Cornbread uses partially hydrogenated corn and cottonseed oil—0.11 grams / square. (This is a trans fat.)

The government allows us to claim 0 trans fat if a serving size has 0.5 grams per serving or less. Some items contain naturally occurring trans fat so it would be impossible to claim 0 trans fat for everything without this government disclaimer.”

While I was at it, I asked about MSG. This answer was also encouraging:

“There is one product at Souper Salad that contains MSG. It is in trace amounts in our Jalapeno Cheese Sauce that is found near the baked potato section of our bar.”

Then I asked about one of the worst sweeteners, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). I am happy to say that there weren’t a lot of items on this list. As you might expect, HFCS is in some of their desserts. This is the list of products containing HFCS:

“Caramel Topping
Ketchup
Oreo Cookies
Crushed Pineapple Topping
Chocolate Pudding
Fruit Smoothies
Chocolate Syrup

Our breads do not contain high fructose corn syrup.”

The only way you’ll ever know what you’re eating, is to check out your favorite restaurant yourself. Obviously, if you or a family member is sensitive to other food additives, eating out is more of a challenge. Today, most restaurants have websites offering nutritional information. Understand, that you probably will have to email their “food scientist” from their web page to get the information you really need.

Learn more about trans fat, CLICK HERE.
Learn more about High Fructose Corn Syrup, CLICK HERE.