Partially Hydrogenated Oils

When you're looking through an ingredient list on food packaging, you may shrug off any vegetable oils as being fine, like soybean oil. But when it has the words "partially hydrogenated" in front of it, you need to put it back on the shelf.

What is a hydrogenated oil?

Any oil can be hydrogenated, either partially or fully. A majority of the time in processed foods, they use soybean oil (which most likely is genetically engineered).

The process of hydrogenation is to take these oils in their natural state and raise them to very high temperatures and then force hydrogen gas into them at high pressure.

This changes the consistency from liquid to solid or semi-solid.

Why hydrogenate?

Companies prefer this type of oil for a few reasons.

First, it's cheap (and that always wins). It also prolongs the shelf life of the product, enhances the flavor, and creates a desirable texture in baked goods.

Why should you avoid it?

One of the main reasons to avoid this type of oil is that once it goes through this process, it now contains trans fats.

We have all heard that trans fats are bad, but do we specifically know why?

According to the article Soybean Oil: One of the Most Harmful Ingredients in Processed Foods, these unnatural, man-made trans fats are linked to:

• Cancer
• Diabetes
• Decreased Immune Function
• Reproductive Problems
• Chronic health problems such as obesity, asthma, auto-immune disease, and bone degeneration
• Heart disease
• Increasing "bad" cholesterol, while lowering "good" cholesterol

A list like that makes me want to stay far away from it. This type of oil is widely used in processed foods, which makes getting large doses quite easy for the typical American.

Watch out for the loop-hole.

Since 2006, the FDA has required trans fats to be listed on the label. But they also allowed any product with up to a half a gram to be rounded down to zero trans fats.

So what some companies have done is to get their serving size down small enough that it is half a gram or less.

If you see a serving size of 5 chips, or 1 cookie, then you know they're probably hiding something.

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With hydrogenated oils having so many benefits to the manufactures, they have been used in thousands of food products. Don't let them bully you into eating them. Pick products without these oils...or better yet, grab a carrot :)

For more reading:

The health dangers of trans fats have been known for decades, yet food companies still poison customers with hydrogenated oils