Mon, 09 Jun 2003, "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Harry Pollard wrote:
>
>> Brad,
>>
>> The hydrogenation of oils goes back a long way. It provided margarine
>> as a cheaper substitute for butter. Later, as butter was a cholesterol
>> saturated food, it was considered safer to eat margarine than butter.
>
>I never took organic chemistry (I knew I'd get a
>bad grade in it, so why do an LD-40 test
>on myself to prove the already known-for-sure?).
>But I would not be surprised if transfats needed the kind
>of specialized equipment that the U.S. is searching for in Iraq, as
>opposed to the kind of small-scale tools Jacques the Peasant
>would have been using ever since the Middle Ages...).
An unsaturated fat is one that has one or more double bonds
between the carbons rather than having all the available bonds
linked to hydrogens. The orientation of those double bonds
come in two flavours, cis and trans, and as it happens,
organic systems have evolved to manufacture and use only the
cis variety. Hydrogenation is just the process of adding
two hydrogens to each of the double bond links, thus eliminating
the double bond and saturating the fat molecule. (That is why
the concept of "hydrogenated polyunsaturated fat" is evil
marketing nonsense. Start with the polyunsaturated fat,
which is an essential nutrient because we are incapable of
manufacturing it in our bodies, but is necessary for the
construction of tissue, then hydrogenate it to destroy its
value, but retain the term "polunsaturated" on the label to
suggest that the contents of the container retain some
nutritive value.) If heat is applied to a polyunsaturated
fat, it can cause the isomer to switch its orientation
from cis to trans, thereby rendering it unusable as food,
and essentially it takes on the character of a toxin.
I know all this in intimate detail, thanks to my longtime
friend Udo Erasmus, who literally wrote the (pop-level)
book on the subject, and with whom, along with my brother,
I collaborated in bringing the first high percentage "omega-3"
polyunsaturated oils to the market in north america in 1986.
-Pete Vincent
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