Trans Fats Explained: What 3 Food Ingredients Have Trans Fats?
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3 Ingredients Your Nutrition Label Should Never Include
On today’s episode of Live Lean TV, I’m explaining what trans fats are and the 3 ingredients you never want to see listed on your food’s nutrition label.
Let’s talk food.
More importantly, let’s talk about the 3 terrible ingredients that should not be entering your temple.
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In other words, your body.
What Are The Health Risk Dangers Of Trans Fats?
Even if you’re having your well earned cheat meal, I do caution you from staying away from these 3 trans fats ingredients that, when consumed in excess, can increase your risk of:
- Inflammation
- Speeding up aging
- Bad LDL cholesterol and decrease your good HDL cholesterol, thus increasing your risk of heart disease
- Cancer
- Developing type 2 diabetes
Ultimately these 3 trans fats ingredients are deadly to your body’s cells.
Here’s something even scarier.
I heard a stat that up to 40% of foods in some grocery stores contain one of these 3 dangerous trans fats ingredients.
This is especially true for refined and processed foods.
What Are Trans Fats?
Trans fats are chemically altered, toxic, and evil manmade fats.
To clarify, there are two types of trans fats:
- Natural trans fats naturally found in animal products.
- Artificial trans fats created in a food lab.
We’re concerned with artificial trans fats, not natural trans fats occurring in animal meat.
Artificial trans fats are created in a food lab by adding hydrogen to liquid vegetable oil.
This trans fats process helps:
- Increase the shelf life
- Adds texture
- Enhances the flavor of the food
What 3 Food Ingredients Have Trans Fats?
But hold up.
You typically will not see the word, “Trans Fats” in the ingredients list.
To find out if the foods you’re eating contain trans fats, look for these 3 trans fats ingredients in the ingredients list:
- Shortening
- Partially hydrogenated vegetable oil
- Hydrogenated vegetable oil
The higher in the ingredients list these are, the worse the food is.
Here are some typical foods that are high in trans fats.
Foods High In Trans Fats
Sorry guys, these are foods that a lot of you may think are delicious.
- Baked goods
- bread
- cookies
- pie
- Some cereals
- Chips
- Most fast foods fried in batter
- Even your frozen dinners that you take to the office for lunch
- Essentially any food made with margarine
Trans Fat Free Meaning – BEWARE!
Even if the nutrition label on the box claims to be “Trans Fat Free”, it doesn’t guarantee the food contains no trans fats.
Here’s the truth about trans fat free labels.
If the food contains less than 0.5g of trans fat per serving, food marketers can still claim that it’s Trans Fat Free.
Just think about this for second.
If a food contains 0.4g of trans fat per serving, it’s still classified as a “trans fat free” food.
Here’s the problem with this.
If you’re crushing a box of “trans fat free” cookies made with shortening, and you’re eating 5 times the indicated serving size, which honestly is not out of reason, you could actually be jamming your heart with 2 grams of trans fats.
Not good.
How Much Trans Fat Can I Eat A Day?
The American Heart Association recommends you limit trans fats to less than 2g per day.
I say don’t piss off your heart and just avoid trans fats.
So there you have it Live Lean Nation.
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Bottom Line On Trans Fat
This doesn’t mean you can never eat tasty baked goods, including cookies or pie again.
It just means you need to make healthier decisions and commit to eating cookies made with higher quality ingredients.
Honestly, I eat cookies every week, but the difference is, Jessica or my mother in law, or I make healthy cookies on our own.
Get Over 200 Quick, Healthy, Easy, Affordable, And Delicious Recipes
In my Eat Clean Live Lean Cookbook, there are over 200 quick, healthy, easy, and affordable recipes, including many baked goods, that are freaking delicious.
It’s time to take control back of the ingredients you’re fueling your body with.
Start looking at the ingredients list before you put it into your body.
Keep Living Lean!
Brad Gouthro is the founder of Live Lean TV, a media company focused on helping men and women “Live Lean” 365 days a year. Brad’s programs and content have helped millions of people all over the world learn how to get in shape, and more importantly, sustain it for life.
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