Hi! Do you like eating French fries, pastries, cookies etc. Well who doesn’t? Normally we are unable to resist the temptation of gorging ourselves whenever a dark chocolate pastry is in front of us. We just blindly follow the food fads without thinking about the health effect of what we eat i.e. we don’t eat to live but we live to eat. The stark reality of ill effects of these past time snacks came to my notice while I was going through a journal, and I thought I would share it with all of you.
Biscuits, breads, confectionaries, fast-foods, fried food items, including namkeens, fried sweets, many cakes and pastries, ready to eat meals, fast foods, junk foods, microwave meals and snacks and much of the street, restaurant and hotel food that we eat is loaded with a special ingredient called trans fats.
Trans fats (or trans fatty acids) are created during an industrial process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid. Another name for trans fats is “partially hydrogenated oils."Trans fats raise your bad (LDL) cholesterol levels and lower your good (HDL) cholesterol levels. Eating trans fats increases your risk of developing heart disease and stroke. It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes
Companies like using trans fats in their foods because they’re easy to use, inexpensive to produce and last a long time. Trans fats give foods a desirable taste and texture. Many restaurants and fast-food outlets use trans fats to deep-fry foods because oils with trans fats can be used many times in commercial fryers
In women, a trans fat actually doubles the risk of heart disease. Trans Fats also leads to decreased cognitive function of the brain, in people more than 65 years of age. Trans fats are also very harmful to the children. It has been shown that children as young as 8, and 9 years have high cholesterol and early stages of clogged arteries.
The solution to this is in our hands we just need to take following measures:
Read labels of food items regularly and reject items containing trans fats or partially hydrogenated oils
Eat healthy snacks like sprouted cereals, fiber rich foods, whole grain breads and have a lots of salads
Always ask restaurants/hotels the kind of oil they use for cooking
Exercise regularly
Remember eat healthy to be healthy
