Fats - the good, the bad and the downright ugly

Two posts in one day!  Scary, huh?

I know my blog is daily reading for thousands  a few of you, so here's my latest health warning.  (Or rather, my only one apart from be safe in the sun).  There was an article in The Times on Saturday, in their Weekend supplement (I can't link to it as they expect you to pay these days), concerning trans-fats and their closely related cousins hydrogenated fats.  Apparently these are the seriously bad boys of the fat family, being blamed for the dramatic increase in levels of heart disease, certain cancers, strokes and diabetes.  These are only the things we know about at the moment; this list may well grow over the next few years.

Now I'm normally quite sceptical about government advice on what is bad for me to eat, but if you could read this article you would see that our government, unlike the US, aren't saying much about banning these fats.  In fact, the UK Food Standards Agency thinks that legislation would be "unlikely to deliver any significant health benefit" as our intake levels are "approximately half that of recommended levels".  Hmmm, the government want us all to eat healthily, lose weight, get more exercise, reduce type 2 diabetes and heart disease, yet there's no reason to bring in legislation to ban the stuff.

Over in the States, whole areas have outlawed these fats in restaurants, whilst in California (ever the extremist on the health front) has intoduced a state-wide ban.  Any food manufacturer who wants to keep their market share over there has removed it from their products.  Are you outraged yet?

Trans-fats are made by processing polyunsaturated fats.  These types of fat are runny at room temperature and quickly go rancid.  By adding hydrogen to them - no you're not getting a complicated chemistry lesson on how this happens, it just does OK - their structure is altered and they become partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.  This gunk can be found in many processed foods including, but not limited to, popcorn, chips, cakes, biscuits.  If you want to avoid it, and who wouldn't, look for products that are labelled 'all butter', or are made with a different fat.  You should avoid anything that has 'vegetable fat', 'shortening', 'margarine' or 'partially hydrogenated vegetable oil/fat' in the list of ingredients.

So that's the ugly out the way.  The bad could be attached to saturated fats, and until recently it was.  Although it still shouldn't be consumed in great quantity it is less harmful than trans-fats.  Saturated fats can be found in goods such as milk, butter, meat, some nuts and cocoa butter.

The good fats are the unsaturated fats, both poly- and mono-.  Poly-unsaturated fats are the omega-3s and omega-6s.  The ideal balance is 3 x 3s to 1 x 6s.  Polys can be found in seeds, nuts and oily fish.  If these aren't prominent in your diet it might make sense to take a supplement.  Monos can be found in avocado, olive oil, eggs and lamb, amongst other things.  Here at Dark Corner we do all our stir-fries in olive oil.

I've already discussed it with he who thinks he's boss (unless it's Sunday when it IS his turn) and I've bought some butter today, along with a butter dish - a proper pot one.  All I need now is to work out if I can fry chips in olive oil, or whether sunflower oil is ok.  Don't anyone mention oven chips, not unless you can recommend ones that taste like the real thing instead of cardboard/sawdust sweepings.

I hope you all find this of some use.