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Hydrogenated Fat Q & A
By WLR Dietitian
Q I’ve noticed a lot of foods contain hydrogenated fat. Is
this bad for my diet?
A As you’ve already discovered, many processed foods contain
hydrogenated fat or hydrogenated vegetable oil and these ingredients
certainly contribute to the calorie content of a food, often making
it unsuitable if you’re trying to lose weight. But worse than this,
foods containing these ingredients also contain trans fats – and
these are thought to be as harmful to heart health as saturated fat.
Ironically, it’s the processing of pure vegetable oils – a good
source of heart-friendly unsaturates – that creates harmful trans
fats! During manufacturing, these liquid oils have hydrogen bubbled
through them in a process called hydrogenation to improve their
texture, flavour and shelf life. The resulting product is a more
solid fat, called hydrogenated fat or hydrogenated vegetable oil,
which goes on to be used as an ingredient in many processed foods.
Unfortunately, there are no legal requirements for food
manufacturers to label trans fats and few choose to do so. This
means for now, you need to scour ingredients lists for hydrogenated
fats or hydrogenated vegetable oils. If a food product contains either,
it will almost certainly contain trans fats, too – and the higher up
the list the ingredient appears, the more trans fats the product
will contain.
In general though, trans fats are found in cakes,
biscuits, margarines, takeaways, pastry, pies and fried foods – and
as you know, these are the foods you should be eating less of anyway
if you want to lose weight!
You can keep track of your diet
with the Weight Loss Resources online food diary.
Try it free for 24 hours.
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