What makes trans fats unhealthy

T-fat from the diet is incorporated into brain cell membranes and alter the ability of neurons to communicate. This can diminish mental performance. Relationship between T-fat intake and depression risk was observed. Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; cis-fatty acids; cognitive defects; food labeling.

Trans fat is a type of dietary fat. Of all the fats, trans fat is the worst for your health. Too much trans fat in your diet increases your risk for heart disease and other health problems. Trans fats are made when food makers turn liquid oils into solid fats, like shortening or margarine. Trans fats can be found in many fried, "fast" packaged, or processed foods, including:.

Animal foods, such as red meats and dairy, have small amounts of trans fats. But most trans fats come from processed foods. Your body does not need or benefit from trans fats. Eating these fats increase your risk for health problems. All packaged foods have a nutrition label that includes fat content. Food makers are required to label trans fats on nutrition and some supplement labels.

Reading food labels can help you keep track of how much trans fat you eat. Trans fats are under review for their health effects. Experts are working to limit the amount of trans fats used in packaged foods and restaurants. Trans fats are found in many processed and packaged foods.

Note that these foods are often low in nutrients and have extra calories from sugar:. Not all packaged foods have trans fats. It depends on the ingredients that were used. That is why it is important to read labels. While it is fine to treat yourself to sweets and other high-fat foods once in a while, it is best to avoid food with trans fats completely. You can cut how much trans fat you eat by substituting healthier foods for less healthy options.

Replace foods high in trans and saturated fats with foods that have polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. Here is how to get started:. Trans fats have no known health benefits and that there is no safe level of consumption. Therefore, they have been officially banned in the United States. Early in the 20 th century, trans fats were found mainly in solid margarines and vegetable shortening. As food makers learned new ways to use partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, they began appearing in everything from commercial cookies and pastries to fast-food French fries.

Trans fats are now banned in the U. Eating foods rich in trans fats increases the amount of harmful LDL cholesterol in the bloodstream and reduces the amount of beneficial HDL cholesterol. Trans fats create inflammation, which is linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.

They contribute to insulin resistance, which increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Saturated fats are common in the American diet. They are solid at room temperature — think cooled bacon grease, but what is saturated fat? Common sources of saturated fat include red meat, whole milk and other whole-milk dairy foods, cheese, coconut oil , and many commercially prepared baked goods and other foods. The word "saturated" here refers to the number of hydrogen atoms surrounding each carbon atom.

The chain of carbon atoms holds as many hydrogen atoms as possible — it's saturated with hydrogens. Is saturated fat bad for you? A diet rich in saturated fats can drive up total cholesterol, and tip the balance toward more harmful LDL cholesterol, which prompts blockages to form in arteries in the heart and elsewhere in the body.

A handful of recent reports have muddied the link between saturated fat and heart disease. One meta-analysis of 21 studies said that there was not enough evidence to conclude that saturated fat increases the risk of heart disease, but that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat may indeed reduce risk of heart disease.

Two other major studies narrowed the prescription slightly, concluding that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fats like vegetable oils or high-fiber carbohydrates is the best bet for reducing the risk of heart disease, but replacing saturated fat with highly processed carbohydrates could do the opposite.

Good fats come mainly from vegetables, nuts, seeds, and fish. They differ from saturated fats by having fewer hydrogen atoms bonded to their carbon chains. Healthy fats are liquid at room temperature, not solid. There are two broad categories of beneficial fats: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.

Monounsaturated fats. When you dip your bread in olive oil at an Italian restaurant, you're getting mostly monounsaturated fat. Monounsaturated fats have a single carbon-to-carbon double bond. The result is that it has two fewer hydrogen atoms than a saturated fat and a bend at the double bond.

This structure keeps monounsaturated fats liquid at room temperature. Good sources of monounsaturated fats are olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, avocados, and most nuts, as well as high-oleic safflower and sunflower oils. The discovery that monounsaturated fat could be healthful came from the Seven Countries Study during the s.

It revealed that people in Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean region enjoyed a low rate of heart disease despite a high-fat diet.

The main fat in their diet, though, was not the saturated animal fat common in countries with higher rates of heart disease. It was olive oil, which contains mainly monounsaturated fat. This finding produced a surge of interest in olive oil and the "Mediterranean diet," a style of eating regarded as a healthful choice today. Although there's no recommended daily intake of monounsaturated fats, the Institute of Medicine recommends using them as much as possible along with polyunsaturated fats to replace saturated and trans fats.