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Partially-Hydrogenated Non-Dairy Gum-Based Beverage

Trans fat is a type of artificial fat that not only clogs your arteries, it destroys good cholesterol as well.

While the cells in your body need natural fatty acids in order to function, trans fat is artificial and cannot be absorbed by the body. One scientist compared its effect on the body to grains of sand in the mechanism of a clock. The FDA in the States has declared that there is "No safe dietary level" and as a consequence, all food labels must be altered to show the level of trans fat by January 2006.

It's sending the food-processing industry into something of a tiz. Trans fat is their favourite! It's made by pumping vegetable oil full of hydrogen to get partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil. The great thing about it is that it stays solid at room temperature, which is vital if your processed cookies have to stay stable and ready-to-eat for several years.

They are having a terrible time trying to find a healthy replacement with the same qualities. Partially-hydrogenated oil is the type in crackers, biscuits, frozen dinners, cereal bars, peanut butter, margarine, and microwave popcorn. It's used by just about every fast-food outlet in the world. The really ironic thing is that when McD's changed from beef tallow to partially-hydrogenated for their fries in the early 90's, they managed to make an already incredibly unhealthy product even worse.

Fast food (surprise) is unaffected by the new labelling rules. So the 6 grams of trans-fat per large fries will continue unabated. But you *might* start looking at the nutritional info on the food you're buying.

Bad Oil With Trans-Fat Nastiness
Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil.

Better Oil Without Trans-Fat
Non-Hydrogenated Polyunsaturated
Monounsaturated

And if you don't believe me, believe this guy:
"There was a lot of resistance from the scientific community because a lot of people had made their careers telling people to eat margarine instead of butter," said Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of a handful of medical researchers who have led the fight against trans fat. "When I was a physician in the 1980's, that's what I was telling people to do and unfortunately we were often sending them to their graves prematurely."

(from the nytimes.com website)

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Oh and also, a cute thing happened yesterday while I was in the supermarket. A couple (I think they may have been tourists) were asking a very young-looking supermarket girl for assistance to find "Ice Wine". Their English was kinda accented and after getting them to repeat it several times, the poor girl was red in the face and flustered and ended up steering them towards the chiller in desperation.

I stalked them a little until she was out of sight and then directed them to the ice wine section. The unusual bit for me was I then took my courage and sought out the supermarket girl, and just quietly cleared up her confusion. I was afraid that she'd think I was hassling her, but she actually thanked me profusely. So that was nice, she learnt something new and I got to help tourists :) And the tourists got wine, so everyone was pleased!

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And finally... I worked out a solution to my "too many slogans, so few t-shirts" dilemma.

Posted by phreq at February 13, 2005 07:47 AM | TrackBack