 fats.
Some common sources of (PHO’s) artificial trans fats are margarine, fast food, coffee creamer, baked goods, crackers, fried potatoes, chips, microwave popcorns, frozen pizza, refrigerated dough products (such as biscuits and cinnamon rolls), and ready-to-use frostings. Many restaurants and fast-food outlets use trans fats to deep-fry foods because oils with trans fats can be used many times in commercial fryers.
GOOD NEWS! Canada has been trying to ban artificial trans fats, (PHO’s) for 15 years.
Just recently, on September 17th 2018 an important milestone in terms of nutrition policy in Canada occurred; Canada’s artificial trans fats ban came into effect. Retailers will be given a grace period of two years to clear the inventory already on store shelves. Keep watching those nutrition labels – it will be roughly two years before all PHO’s are eliminated in Canada … that’s pretty significant!
Note – fats contain a combination of different fatty acids. No fat is pure saturated fat or unsaturated fat. This is where it is important to read nutrition labels on food. (We will talk about reading food labels in a future article)
So, as you can see, healthy fat is good and necessary in moderate amounts. But, not all fats are equal and some are actually silently harmful to our overall health in the long run. Dietary fat is a confusing concept, with both evolving science and areas that still remain uncertain. Now that we have this background information about fat, in a future post we will look at 2 lipoprotein biomarkers we can obtain from a simple bloodwork panel. We can use this information to optimize our health, athletic performance and prevent an array of illnesses.
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