Many hear about saturated and trans fats and that we should avoid them for good health but there is little public information as to what they really are. While it is easy to see how thy affect the body while putting down fat around our vital organs one must dig deeper to understand where they come from and why they are so bad. How much we have in our diet and how to avoid them is a vital part of staying fit and healthy.
Saturated fats are the easier to understand as they come from animal material. That beautiful grilled chop with its delicious adornment of fat is exactly what we are talking about. Many can’t resist the great taste of such a treat. Animals fats are also in milk and butter and consumption of these adds to the tally.
Cooking meat in such a way that the fats are rendered and thought removed by consumers is not necessarily the case. Fat gathers under the skin and within the meat and simply cutting such away does not remove it entirely. Marbled meat shows this condition.
Foods containing butter are also high in animal fats and include biscuits, cakes, buns, and pastries. The processing of such changes the nature of such to trans fat, which is a product of the baking and cooking process.
That raises the question of whether the favoured roast is also harmful? Well, it happens that it is. By the same process of using excessive heat to cook the food the trans fat emerges from the saturated animal fat that is often used to baste meat prepared in that manner.
Why are these fats harmful? Normal fat is dealt with by the special enzymes and other things within our digestive tract that prepare it for transport to where it should go. This will involve the liver and pancreas.
When fats are changed into trans fats more hydrogen atoms are added and the digestive process breaks down. Floating freely in the blood they are deposited around the organs, including blood vessels, and are responsible for hardening of arteries and blockages leading to heart attacks, strokes, and other things. Accumulation of such around the liver and pancreas can cause cancer of these organs.
