Trans Fats and Food Additives

In recent years, there has been a lot of focus on trans fats and how they affect your body. What exactly are trans fats and where do they come from? “Trans fats (or trans fatty acids) are created in an industrial process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid. Another name for trans fats is ‘partially hydrogenated oils’.” (americanheart.org) Trans fats are most often associated with the restaurants in the fast food industry like KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s. These fast food chains use trans fats to help contribute to the productivity of their various businesses. By adding these trans fats to regular vegetable oil, they increase the life span of the oil. This means that they can reuse the oils that they use for frying or deep frying their foods.

But what are the negative aspects of these fast food chains using trans fats? The effects of trans fat on the human body are very destructive. Trans fats not only raise the body’s bad LDL cholesterol, but it also lowers the good HDL cholesterol. Because of this, consuming trans fats on a regular basis can lead to Type 2 Diabetes and it has also been linked to heart disease and stroke. From these effects, the American Heart Association recommends that the average human with a 2,000 calorie-a-day diet consume less than 1% of trans fats in their daily food intake. This means less than 20 calories and no more than 2 grams a day of trans fat. The trans fats found in fast food chains are far greater than these small recommended portions. Thus indicating that there is no room for modern day fast food in the American diet.

But this begs the question – “What other negative chemicals are being added to our food without our knowledge?” According to Dr. Janet Star Hull, author of Sweet Poison, there are over 14,000 man-mad chemicals added to our food. Things such as artificial dyes and Aspartame, an artificial sweetener, are slowly killing the American youth. Consuming large amounts of Aspartame can lead to over 92 different health issues such as blindness, severe depression, and even epileptic seizures.

There are also a large number of other chemicals that detrimentally affect the human body that are included in our diets. Melamine is a food additive most commonly found in foods made in China and exported to the United States. Melamine is found in milk and other dairy products and is often used to make infant formula. In a “Dear Colleague” letter to the food industry, Nega Beru, director of the Office of Food Safety in the Center of Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, names the casualties of Melamine poisoning among Chinese infants. He states that approximately 53,000 infants have suffered illnesses related to Melamine including over 13,000 hospitalizations and 4 deaths as of October 2008. Of those numbers, 158 of those victims have suffered from acute kidney failure. It is clear that food additives are not something we should be feeding to our children.

So How Do You Remove Food Additives From Your Diet?
1. Go to the FDA website and look up some of the more dangerous food additives.
2. Check the back of the packages of your recent grocery store purchases. If the item includes one of these deadly additives, remove it from your pantry.
3. Speak to your child’s school or day care to find out what exactly your child consumes while they are there. An informed parent is a happy parent.
4. And finally speak to your doctor about how to improve your diet to include more healthy foods that do not contain these deadly additives.