Eating a healthy diet is the key to maintaining your good health well into old age. Including foods with trans fats, also called trans fatty acids, in your daily eating plan poses serious dangers. According to MayoClinic.com, trans fats can raise your LDL cholesterol -- the bad type of cholesterol -- and lower your HDL cholesterol, or the good type of cholesterol, which can raise your risk of developing heart disease. A variety of common foods contain trans fats, and you should avoid these.
Margarine
Butter may have a bad reputation for its high saturated fat and high number of calories, but eating margarine in your heart-healthy diet can damage your health as well. According to the Cleveland Clinic website, a stick of margarine contains 3 g of trans fat per tablespoon. The website recommends switching to tub or liquid margarine to cut down on the amount of trans fat in your diet. These types of margarines have only 1 to 2 g of this unhealthy fatty acid, although the recommended amount of trans fat in your diet is zero. Some margarine producers are moving from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil as an ingredient in margarine to water or liquid vegetable oil, which cuts down on the trans fats in margarine even further. Even tub margarine that has .5 g of trans fat still has 1.2 g of saturated fats, which can contribute toward developing heart disease.
Doughnuts
Doughnuts are one of the worst offenders for containing trans fats. Both "Business Week" magazine and the University of Pennsylvania Office of Health Education list doughnuts as one of the top 10 foods to avoid, likely to contain artery-clogging trans fats. Every doughnut you eat puts 5 g of trans fat into your body as well as 5 g of saturated fat. Some commercially made donuts contain even more -- 6 to 10 g of harmful fats. Doughnuts are high in calories as well, from 200 to 400, according to the January-February 2004 "Nutrition Action Healthletter." In addition to the high calories, trans fat and saturated fats in doughnuts, they offer few nutritional benefits and may cause a spike in your blood sugar.
French Fries
French fries, particularly fast food french fries, generally contain high levels of trans fats. A medium order of fries often has 8 g of trans fats, according to a December 2006 article in "Business Week" magazine. The United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service indicates that efforts are underway to find healthier ways to make french fries, for instance, through infrared heat instead of frying. Fit Sugar suggests that you try an alternative to french fries that contain less trans fats, including kale chips, roasted chick peas, baked sweet potato fries and baked parsnip and rutabaga fries.
References
- MayoClinic.com: Trans Fat
- Nutrition Action Healthletter: The Hole Truth
- Cleveland Clinic: Butter vs Margarine
- University of Pennsylvania Office of Health Education: The Top 10 Foods to Beware
- Business Week: The Top 10 Trans-fat Foods
- Agricultural Research Service: Development of New Processing Methods for Producing Healthy French Fries
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