Overview

A vitamin is an organic compound required as a nutrient in tiny amounts by an organism. A compound is called a vitamin when it cannot be synthesized in sufficient quantities by an organism, and must be obtained from the diet. Thus, the term is conditional both on the circumstances and the particular organism. For example, ascorbic acid functions as vitamin C for some animals but not others, and vitamins D and K are required in the human diet only in certain circumstances.

Vitamins are classified by their biological and chemical activity, not their structure. Thus, each "vitamin" actually refers to a number of vitamer compounds, which form a set of distinct chemical compounds that show the biological activity of a particular vitamin. Such a set of chemicals are grouped under an alphabetized vitamin "generic descriptor" title, such as "vitamin A," which (for example) includes retinal, retinol, and many carotenoids. Vitamers are often inter-convertible in the body. The term vitamin does not include other essential nutrients such as dietary minerals, essential fatty acids, or essential amino acids, nor does it encompass the large number of other nutrients that promote health but are otherwise required less often.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

The Trans Fat Time Bomb

What do you know about industrially produced trans fatty acids? Unless you are actually a nutritionist or a doctor, the answer is most likely to be: nothing. And why? One survey a few years ago found that the test, 15 percent thought trans fats were good for your love life.

Trans fats are a closely guarded secret. The food production and catering industry want to keep it. A handful of outlets have voluntarily started to cut back on their use under pressure from consumers, but there is no law against them.

Trans fats are a deadly side effect of boiling vegetable oil. Why cooking vegetable oil? This all goes back to a pharmacist named William Norman in 1903. Mr Norman was trying to find a way a substitute for tallow, which was very expensive in time. Mr Norman discovered that if he cottonseed oil until cooked to 260 degrees Celsius in the presence of a catalyst such as nickel, that when it cooled, it was hard. He had produced cheap candle wax by hydrogenating vegetable oil. " The thick, gray-white plates were produced large candles but Mr Norman did not anticipate people eat them.

Food giant Proctor & Gamble, saw the potential and bought the patent of Mr Norman. They were soon producing Crisco in America, a hard vegetable fat, was great for baking and had a long life. Along came a whole series of books Crisco cooking course for Japanese, Jewish or Filipino households. Title: A cooking course in 13 chapters and 24 Pies men like Crisco and recipes for the Jewish housewife. The Crisco do not contain animal fats, making it ideal for vegetarian, kosher and halal households.

But there was a problem: the industrial processing of vegetable oil in hydrogenated fats (HVO or PHVO) proved to be people killed. It was not really until a large clinical study, the Nurses' Health Study, which ran over 10 years in the 1970s and 1980s that the damage really surfaced.

By only carefully detail what types of fat consumed, the Researchers identified these hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil as the Queen of the fast-food grease that was a killer rather than saturated fats. In fact, they discovered that you need to increase your intake of saturated by around 900 percent, to the same effect as it is for the same amount of trans fat. Only small amounts of trans fat - say two grams per day - increases the risk of heart disease by 23 per cent.

There's no use looking for cartons of trans fat should be avoided in the supermarket shopping. What you need to find hydrogenated-Anything, but it is on the ingredients panel, most probably in a text Grae so small that unless you have brought your magnifying glass, you are in trouble. In addition, because in-store bakery food does not need to explain its component parts, you can still innocent shopping dangerous commercially baked produce.

So certainly the European Foods Standards Agency would ban it immediately? No. It was too useful in the industry. There is great "mouth-feel 'what to do with a nice sticky, moist doughnut or a Danish pastry. It extended shelf life. A man lobbying against trans fats in America appears on television with a cup cake from more than 20 years. It still looks perfect and has kept the soft elasticity in connection with such confections.

Like so many of the hazardous substances that we consume trans fats in everything from stock cubes to Saigkeiten, children's cereals to vitamin tablets, Danish pastries to doughnuts, fried food, deep in restaurants, lunch snacks such as sausage rolls and other products from take-away everywhere. They were in many of the Easter eggs we gorged in a few weeks old as the quality road, and they are even in some of the so-called "energy" or "health" bars in the supermarket shelves.

It is ironic that so many Danish pastries contain trans fat, because Denmark was the first country to ban in 2000. Nowhere can be used hydrogenated vegetable oil, and this includes within the catering and restaurant industry and food producers. On April 1 this year, Switzerland and Denmark followed a similar legislation. Here in the UK and the grate part of the rest of Europe, we continue our journey gorge by mountains of dangerous products.

When I came to write Trans Fat: The Time Bomb in Your Food (Souvenir Press � 8.99), it was that this deception really annoys me. How dare the Food Standards Agency, our elected Politicians, consumers and retail outlets and restaurants sectors tell us that we eat candle wax.

All of them are very well known, such as trans fats are not only in the context of a five-fold increase in heart disease, but also with type 2 diabetes , Some cancers, infertility, inflammatory diseases, obesity and insulin resistance.

Eight the big supermarkets, said in January 2007 that they remove all trans fats from their own brand "in the last year. Some managed. Others not. There is nothing the law can do, because this is a voluntary agreement. Besides, how much of what you buy at the supermarket is "own brand" produce? If you shop in Sainsbury or Tesco say it is probably not more than 10 per cent.

Professor Steen Stender, the cardiologist in Denmark, was the force behind the decision to ban trans fats. He says: "Between the introduction of the ban in 2000 and 2005, we saw heart disease in this country fell by 20 percent. What the EU needs proof before he surrendered to the labelling of food ideas and ineffective voluntary codes and maintains a level playing field for the food industry across the EU, where no trans fats are everywhere? "

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maggie_Stanfield

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