How Can I Avoid Trans Fats? 3 Dead-Simple Secrets

There’s been a lot of talk about trans fats in the media over the last 5 or 6 years, with New York City actually banning trans fats back in 2006. I want to talk a little about why these fats are so bad for us, and more importantly — how we can avoid them in our day-to-day lives.

These are fats that sneak up on us, so it’s important to be armed with all the information you can.

What Exactly is Trans Fat

Trans fats are manufactured fats (except for the ones that occur naturally, but they are small enough to not seriously worry about).

The ones that are the most dangerous for your body don’t occur naturally in the wild, but rather happen through an industrial process. Already, if you’ve read any of the previous Nutrition Articles on my site, you’ll know that eating too much manufactured fat is an extremely easy way to ruin your fat loss and put some serious bumps on the road towards a lean, ripped body.

Trans Fat is created when a manufacturer adds hydrogen to vegetable oil. They call this “hydrogenation”, which is why you hear about “hydrogenated vegetable oil” and the “non-hydrogenated” variety.

Making Food Last Longer Often Means Making It Worse For Us

This process makes the vegetable oil (it could be anything, but it’s often soy or canola oil, being the cheapest and, not coincidentally, not very good for you) thicker than it normally would be, which means one thing — you can keep food on the shelf longer.

Ever poured extra virgin olive oil all over some bruschetta? Pretty greasy if it gets on your hands, right? Yeah, obviously — it’s a fat. It’s something we put up with in exchange for eating great-quality fats that taste delicious.

Trans fats are all about eliminating this greasiness, not spoiling, and lasting longer on the shelves. Manufacturers came up with this hydrogenation process in order to make more profits by being able to “produce” and ship food in packages that could sit on a shelf for a lot longer.

Remember: long expiration dates for foods that should otherwise rot = bad. It means there’s stuff in there you don’t want to be eating.

Why The Body Can’t Deal With Trans Fats

Ok, you say — so they add a little hydrogen to some vegetable oil. What’s the problem?

Basically, this:

1. Trans fats increase your bad cholesterol. They do the opposite of what, say, omega-3s in olive oil do. But that’s not all…
2. Trans fats decrease your good cholesterol. It’s not enough that they could just give you some of the bad stuff, but they legitimately lower your good cholesterol, racking up your risk for heart disease in the process. Let’s not even get started as to why this is bad for a weight loss, healthy-living, ripped-body perspective — anything that increases your risk of heart attack by this much is not something you want to be dealing with.

How to Avoid Trans Fat

A few things to remember:

• Eat more fresh food. If it rots or goes moldy fast, like bakery-fresh bread, it’s unlikely to be loaded with trans fats.
• Check labels. Most labels now say how much trans fat a product contains.
• If you’re in the US, watch out. If there’s less than 0.5 grams of trans fat in a product, it can legally say “trans fat free!” This isn’t much of a big deal if you’re having one or two potato chips, but people often go crazy when they think a food is giving them a free pass. That’s why so-called “health” and “diet” foods are so awful for you.
• Get rid of margarine, shortening, processed cookies, crackers, cakes, and donuts. If you have to have any of this stuff, go buy it from a real bakery where it’ll go bad in 2-3 days instead of sitting, wrapped, on a shelf for a year. You know why a Twinkie is indestructible? Not because it’s good for you!

No one who is serious about getting in shape, getting a kick-ass body, and achieving their fitness goals is sitting there eating only “diet” and “health”-labeled products in the first place. They’re eating nature’s health products: natural whole food that doesn’t have a marketing team behind it.

Do the same!