Before 1900, North American housewives cooked exclusively with lard and butter. The first product containing trans fats—hardened vegetable oil—was Crisco, introduced in 1911. We now eat more than 100,000 times more vegetable oils than we did at the beginning of the century. Vegetable oils now make up about 7-8 percent of all calories consumed by the North American public. Trans fats have been implicated in serious health problems. They interfere with basic cellular membrane functioning, and may promote heart disease. While trans fats are being recognized as harmful and are being largely eliminated, many restaurants, in their frying operations, are reverting back to using regular vegetable oils again. But vegetable oils still have the worrisome problem of degrading into toxic oxidation products when heated. One category called aldehydes are highly inflammatory, and may promote heart disease and Alzheimer’s.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 11:03:13 +0000
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