Re: Cholesterol, Tranfat, CIS?

November 29, 2004

I may have this totally screwed up, but isn't there a cis- form of transfat

which is totally natural but in no way connected to the hydrogenated transfat we

all know and hate? If so, I do not think the 2 forms can really be likened to

one another.

AFAIK Sally Fallon says transfat is a totally artificial product. Yet, some

others say there is a naturally occurring amount of transfat. That leads me to

believe someone is using a much broader definition of what a transfat is. It may

be a good idea to ask which definition one is using when they make such

statement.

Hoping I didn't screw the interpretation up too much,

Darrell

November 29, 2004

" Before hydrogenation, pairs of hydrogen atoms occur together on the

chain, causing the chain to bend slightly and creating a concentration

of electrons at the site of the double bond. This is called the cis

formation, the configuration most commonly found in nature. With

hydrogenation, one hydrogen atom of the pair is moved to the other side

so that the molecule straightens. This is called the trans formation,

rarely found in nature. " NT, p. 14

Note the word rarely. How often does trans formation happen in nature?

Deanna

Darrell wrote:

> I may have this totally screwed up, but isn't there a cis- form of

> transfat which is totally natural but in no way connected to the

> hydrogenated transfat we all know and hate? If so, I do not think the

> 2 forms can really be likened to one another.

>

> AFAIK Sally Fallon says transfat is a totally artificial product. Yet,

> some others say there is a naturally occurring amount of transfat.

> That leads me to believe someone is using a much broader definition of

> what a transfat is. It may be a good idea to ask which definition one

> is using when they make such statement.

>

> Hoping I didn't screw the interpretation up too much,

> Darrell

>

November 29, 2004

> If you ignore their customary bashing of saturated fats, cholesterol

and animal products,

> this FAQ is a good read.

>

> -Pratick

~~~But, if we can't believe them about saturated fats and cholesterol,

how can we believe them about transfats?

Carol

November 29, 2004

> " Before hydrogenation, pairs of hydrogen atoms occur together on the

> chain, causing the chain to bend slightly and creating a concentration

> of electrons at the site of the double bond. This is called the cis

> formation, the configuration most commonly found in nature. With

> hydrogenation, one hydrogen atom of the pair is moved to the other side

> so that the molecule straightens. This is called the trans formation,

> rarely found in nature. " NT, p. 14

>

> Note the word rarely. How often does trans formation happen in nature?

>

The only instance I am aware of is the trans fat produced in the gut of ruminant

animals, such as cows and goats. Conjugated Linoleic Acid is such a trans fat.

" Small amounts of natural trans fat also occur in meat and butter, but (contrary

to food industry claims) there is no evidence that these are harmful like the

synthetic trans fats made from vegetable oil. Indeed the naturally-occuring

Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLA) are beneficial to health. "

tfX::the campaign against trans fats in food

http://www.tfx.org.uk/

Bruce

November 30, 2004

I guess I may never understand this. The definition of transfats, even at the

FDA site, is that they are caused by hydrogenation and made-made interventions.

(My synopsis of it, not a direct quote, but basically that they're caused by

man.) Then they also say they occur in nature in small amounts too. So, what

is the criteria for determining if a natural fat is a transfat? What is it

about CLA that makes it a transfat, in other words?

Carol

Aha ! So the CLA is actually a form of benefic trans fat.

That explains it.

Which is why most animal-based products that we eat at our home (dairy, lamb,

goat, ,

etc.) lists small amounts of trans fats in the labels.

-Pratick

November 30, 2004

Pratick,

I guess I don't have the link for the chemical illustration, (I looked), but I

think I understand now - that it's actually the chemical composition that

identifies whether it's a transfat or not. I had been thinking it was simply an

artificial mechanical process that created transfats, and not thinking about the

fact that the mechanical process would cause a chemical change.....how silly!

:-) (Not that it's a mechanical process when it's naturally caused, of course,

but I wasn't even 'going there' as far as the natural side of it is concerned.)

Thanks for your explanation, it set me straight! Every once in awhile, there

are things like this that I think I understand, and then am so surprised to see

what more there is to it. It's like they say, " you don't know what it is you

don't know " . :-)

Carol

Carol --

" trans " fat is actually the type of chemical bonding for fatty acids.

The most common form is cis bonding.

" trans " bonding is the exception to the rule.

Look closely at the illustrations of the fatty acid chemical bonds on the FDA

website and

you will notice the difference between the bonding in the saturated, unsaturated

and

trans fatty acids.

What the FDA and other websites are saying is that 99% of trans fats are

man-made.

But there is that 1% of trans fatty acids that are naturally occuring.

This is what Sally and Enig refer to as " rarely found in nature " .

My understanding from all this is that if the trans fat is naturally occuring it

is not

harmful.

In fact it represents an essential part of diet (the CLA).

Like most other cases of man's messing with nature, it is the artificial way of

creating

trans fats (hydrogenation) that is harmful.

-Pratick

November 30, 2004

> Aha ! So the CLA is actually a form of benefic trans fat.

> That explains it.

> Which is why most animal-based products that we eat at our home

> (dairy, lamb, goat, ,

> etc.) lists small amounts of trans fats in the labels.

>

> -Pratick

>

> --- Bruce Stordock wrote:

> > The only instance I am aware of is the trans fat produced in the gut

> of ruminant

> > animals, such as cows and goats. Conjugated Linoleic Acid is such a

> trans fat.

> >

> > " Small amounts of natural trans fat also occur in meat and butter,

> but (contrary

> > to food industry claims) there is no evidence that these are harmful

> like the

> > synthetic trans fats made from vegetable oil. Indeed the

> naturally-occuring

> > Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLA) are beneficial to health. "

> >

> > tfX::the campaign against trans fats in food

> > http://www.tfx.org.uk/

-----------------------------------------------

Pratick & Bruce,

Thanks for the helpful ideas and links on this controversial matter!

Fascinating information about CLA. No worries there.

Deanna

December 1, 2004

In a message dated 11/30/04 8:26:01 PM Eastern Standard Time, hl@...

writes:

> >> " Small amounts of natural trans fat also occur in meat and butter,

> >but (contrary

> >>to food industry claims) there is no evidence that these are harmful

> >like the

> >>synthetic trans fats made from vegetable oil. Indeed the

> >naturally-occuring

> >>Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLA) are beneficial to health. "

______

~~~~> Just to clear it up, the harmful trans fatty acids found in

hydrogenated vegetable oil ARE found in animal products, but in very tiny

amounts.

Butter contains a lot of CLA and trans-veccenic acid (CLA precursor), but also

contains a bunch of other trans fats in very small quantities including those

that

dominate hydrogenated vegetable oil.

It's conceivable that someone who eats a real lot of butter could get a

significant amount of them-- I calculated it once before and don't remember

exactly, but something like if you eat a pound of butter a day you could get the

equivalent of a tbsp of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

I'm still waiting to find some evidence about the mechanism by which trans

fats are harmful to the body. It seems like most of the data out there is

correlational, and it isn't clear to me whether trans fats are just correlated

with

EFA deficiency (since hodrogenation destroys EFAs in the oils), or whether

trans fats per se are actively harmful.

If anyone has any info on this please pass it along.

Chris

December 1, 2004

I did have that information about trans fats, but I'll have to look for it. If

I find it, I'll post it.

In the meantime, does anyone know if making ghee from butter gets rid of the

transfat problem?

Carol

It's conceivable that someone who eats a real lot of butter could get a

significant amount of them-- I calculated it once before and don't remember

exactly, but something like if you eat a pound of butter a day you could get the

equivalent of a tbsp of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

If anyone has any info on this please pass it along.

Chris

December 4, 2004

In a message dated 12/2/04 8:11:07 AM Eastern Standard Time,

pratickmukherjee@... writes:

Carol wrote:

> >In the meantime, does anyone know if making ghee from butter gets rid of

> the transfat

> >problem?

_____

~~~> There is no trans fat problem with butter.

_____

> wrote:

> I know about Enig's theory of homogenisation and its link to heart di

> sease and I

> wonder if there is trans fat behind that.

_____

~~~> That is not Enig's theory. Enig has, contrarily, criticized

this theory.

Chris

December 4, 2004

Carol wrote:

> >In the meantime, does anyone know if making ghee from butter gets rid of

> the transfat

> >problem?

~~~I didn't write that, nor did I write the rest of the lines in that email.

Carol

December 4, 2004

Carol wrote:

> >In the meantime, does anyone know if making ghee from butter gets rid of

> the transfat

> >problem?

_____

~~~> There is no trans fat problem with butter.

~~~Excuse my last post on this, I got the cut and pastes wrong when I said I

didn't write the above. I meant to paste a different passage. Actually, we

just went around and around about the natural transfats. I didn't think there

were transfats in butter either, but talk to Pratick and others and he'll prove

there is very small amounts of naturally occuring transfats in it. (You should

have run into those emails somewhere along the line....or will.)

Carol

_____

December 5, 2004

In a message dated 12/5/04 1:48:38 AM Eastern Standard Time, cah@...

writes:

> ~~~> There is no trans fat problem with butter.

>

> ~~~Excuse my last post on this, I got the cut and pastes wrong when I said I

> didn't write the above. I meant to paste a different passage. Actually, we

> just went around and around about the natural transfats. I didn't think

> there were transfats in butter either, but talk to Pratick and others and

he'll

> prove there is very small amounts of naturally occuring transfats in it.

> (You should have run into those emails somewhere along the line....or will.)

____

~~> I didn't say there were no trans fats. I said there was no trans fat

problem. In other words, it isn't an issue.

Chris

December 9, 2004

In a message dated 11/29/04 9:47:28 PM Eastern Standard Time,

pratickmukherjee@... writes:

> It must be true that naturally occuring trans fat are not damaging like the

> artificial

> ones, and might even be carriers of important nutrients.

_____

~~~~> Why? I don't see why it couldn't be either a) the trans fats found in

both foods are harmful, but they occur in such small amounts in natural foods

that no natural food is harmful, or neither the trans fats in animal foods

nor the trans fats in PHOs are harmful, but those consuming PHOs suffer from

severe EFA deficiencies induced by the displacement of EFA-rich fats with

vegetable oils in which any EFAs naturally present have been destroyed by

hydrogenation.

Butter contains the trans fats that dominate partially hydrogenated oils,

but in much smaller amounts both than those found in PHOs and than the other

trans fats in butter. It's much more reasonable to assume that, if these

particular fatty acids are harmful when found in PHOs, that they have the same

biological activity when found in butter, but that they are found in negligible

amounts in butter, than to believe that chemically identical fatty acids could

have different biological activities when found in different foods.

Chris

December 9, 2004

In a message dated 11/29/04 3:51:45 PM Eastern Standard Time, hl@...

writes:

> Note the word rarely. How often does trans formation happen in nature?

____

~~~> If you mean trans formation in general, it is very common. If you mean

trans formation of fatty acids in particular, you can find this information in

Enig's book, _Know Your Fats._ Trans fatty acids in ruminant fats, as a

proportion of total fatty acids, range from less than 2% up to 5%. The

proportion of trans fatty acids in ruminant fats that have their trans double

bonds

in the delta- 9, 10, and 12 positions, which are associated with health

problems and make up over half of the trans FAs in PHOs, is one fifth.

Thus, total trans FAs in ruminant fat are roughly 2-5% of total FAs, and

supposedly harmful trans FAs are 0.4-1% of total FAs.

(Enig, _KYF_, p38-39)

Chris

December 9, 2004

In a message dated 11/29/04 3:36:55 PM Eastern Standard Time,

lazlo75501@... writes:

> I may have this totally screwed up, but isn't there a cis- form of transfat

> which is totally natural but in no way connected to the hydrogenated

> transfat we all know and hate? If so, I do not think the 2 forms can really be

> likened to one another.

____

~~~> There are some fatty acids that have both trans and cis bonds, but there

is no cis form of trans-fat. Cis and trans refer neither to fats nor fatty

acids, but to double bonds, which can only be cis and trans and not both.

The cis/trans fatty acids would act differently in terms of their tendency to

aggregate, because they would be shaped like a monounsaturated fatty acid

rather than a saturated fatty acid. As to specific physiological activity, I

would avoid generalizing about any large class of fatty acids because specific

FAs within a class can have different biological properties.

_____

> AFAIK Sally Fallon says transfat is a totally artificial product. Yet, some

> others say there is a naturally occurring amount of transfat. That leads me

> to believe someone is using a much broader definition of what a transfat is.

> It may be a good idea to ask which definition one is using when they make

> such statement.

____

~~~~> I've never heard her say that, and if she did, she was just wrong. She

may have used the term carelessly to refer to partially hydrogenated oils,

and by " totally " she may have been emphasizing the fake-ness of PHOs and

diminishing their supposed status as food, rather than implying that trans fats

are

only found in artificial products.

Chris

December 9, 2004

[Chris] Thus, total trans FAs in ruminant fat are roughly 2-5% of total

FAs, and

supposedly harmful trans FAs are 0.4-1% of total FAs.

(Enig, _KYF_, p38-39)

[Deanna] Thank you, this is exactly what I was wanting to know.

Need said book, I believe, mate.

D

December 9, 2004

Chris-

>I don't see why it couldn't be either a) the trans fats found in

>both foods are harmful, but they occur in such small amounts in natural foods

>that no natural food is harmful, or neither the trans fats in animal foods

>nor the trans fats in PHOs are harmful, but those consuming PHOs suffer from

>severe EFA deficiencies induced by the displacement of EFA-rich fats with

>vegetable oils in which any EFAs naturally present have been destroyed by

>hydrogenation.

Another possibility is that we can use certain trans fats in small

quantities, but when we get too much of them they're toxic. That's true of

some trace elements and other nutrients.

-

December 10, 2004

In a message dated 12/9/04 10:58:25 PM Eastern Standard Time,

Idol@... writes:

> Another possibility is that we can use certain trans fats in small

> quantities, but when we get too much of them they're toxic. That's true of

> some trace elements and other nutrients.

______

~~~~> That's a good observation that I overlooked. A key difference, though,

is that elements can't be enzymatically converted, and fats can. I'd think

that if the body was prepared to use these TFAs in some way, that it would also

be able to convert them to CFAs or saturate them. But it could be that the

body has no way of upregulating its production of those enzymes to meet the

dramatically increased need that accompanies the consumption of PHOs.

Chris

December 10, 2004

Chris-

> > Another possibility is that we can use certain trans fats in small

> > quantities, but when we get too much of them they're toxic. That's

> true of

> > some trace elements and other nutrients.

>

>~~~~> That's a good observation that I overlooked. A key difference, though,

>is that elements can't be enzymatically converted, and fats can. I'd think

>that if the body was prepared to use these TFAs in some way, that it would

>also

>be able to convert them to CFAs or saturate them. But it could be that the

>body has no way of upregulating its production of those enzymes to meet the

>dramatically increased need that accompanies the consumption of PHOs.

It is possible that the body would have developed some mechanism to

saturate or otherwise convert naturally occurring TFAs, but look how

extraordinarily inefficient other somewhat similar conversion mechanisms

for non-trans FAs are. Considering that the presence and variance of TFAs

in a natural diet are so much dramatically lower than the presence and

variance of unsaturated CFAs, I doubt we'll ever discover a significant

capacity for TFA modification, and nothing in nature would've ever required

us to adapt to levels of TFAs even remotely approaching those in modern

PHO-containing diets.

-

December 10, 2004

In a message dated 12/10/04 8:04:52 PM Eastern Standard Time,

jaltak@... writes:

> And, I'm sure, the way modern trans-fats are created has a huge part to

> play

> in whether the body can use them.

____

~~~> I don't think it has anything to do with it in a direct way, simply

based on our chemical knowledge and logic. If a synthetic version of a

substance

differs from a natural one, and they are the same substance, it is because

they are different isomers. The body cannot distinguish between chemicals based

on where they came from or how they were produced, but rather based on what

they *are*. Trans/cis isomerism is the limit of the isomerism a fatty acid can

go through. A trans and a cis fatty acid of the same carbon length and with

double bonds in the same position would be examples of the same substance that

the body can distinguish between. Two identical trans fatty acids cannot

differ from each other.

Of course, the way that they are produced allows the dramatically increased

amount of them, so in that indirect sense the production method plays a role in

the associated health problems. But if a controlled study were to be

conducted where trans fatty acids from PHOs and an equivalent amount of the same

trans fatty acids isolated from butter were supplemented to a common control

diet,

I would assume at this point that the two experimental groups would not show

a difference in effect.

Chris

December 10, 2004

And, I'm sure, the way modern trans-fats are created has a huge part to play

in whether the body can use them.

By the way, what does PHO stand for? I should probably know, but it escapes

me.

Enjoy! ;-)

Judith Alta

-----Original Message-----

Chris-

> > Another possibility is that we can use certain trans fats in small

> > quantities, but when we get too much of them they're toxic. That's

> true of

> > some trace elements and other nutrients.

>

>~~~~> That's a good observation that I overlooked. A key difference,

though,