Interesterified Fats

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #1

My reading for the day. Any thoughts

Diet and Nutrition Survey (2012/2013–2013/2014)

#2

Never heard about them before… Thanks. I like to know things. I just skimmed over the article but apparently it’s some fancy new(er) thing in processed foods for people who consider saturated fat bad? Very much not for me :smiley: My processed food has saturated fat galore (unsaturated too, once I looked it up and apparently all my usual items have a lot of both) and it can’t be changed without putting me off.

I googled a bit afterwards (I was curious about the opinion in Hungary, didn’t find anything useful) and learned the term “health literacy”. That was new to me as well.

(Doug) #3

The money behind it is Coca-Cola; DuPont, Marks and Spencer, Mondelez, The National Association of British and Irish Millers, Nestle, PepsiCo, Sainsbury’s, Unilever. Enormous food processors and marketers.

They’re going with the thesis that saturated fats are necessarily a bad thing, and hence that replacing them is a good thing. This is even while noting that it’s been challenged by meta-analyses of prospective studies showing no relationship between saturated fats and the risk of coronary heart disease.

They also note that trans fats/partially hydrogenated oils pose health problems.

They’re thinking that maybe interesterified fats should replace some of all the above.

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #4

That is exactly what I was looking into Doug. And exactly what I thought too.

My starting point for that study was Zoe … and they are promoting the same. Terrible people

View with caution

(Doug) #5

Peter, it seems really endless these days - people/companies motivated by profit, attention, ‘relevance,’ etc., can and will say nearly anything.

If we’re just looking at trans fats and hydrogenated oils, then maybe some day there will be a rational case made that IE fats are better. But that’s still neglecting arguments for saturated fats (and eating more natural and unprocessed foods which are not chemically modified in the first place).

Personally, I think it’s the same old deal - still blaming ‘saturated fat’ for ills that substantially stem from other causes such as massive, chronic consumption of carbohydrates, refined carbohydrates, and then the attendant inflammation, high insulin/blood sugar levels, and other bad downstream effects.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6

However, even if it can be shown that inter-esterified fats are less bad for us than trans-fats, that doesn’t mean they are necessarily good for us. A low-tar cigarette would be a case in point: less bad, perhaps, but still bad.

(Bob M) #7

I stopped reading after this:

The use of IE fats can also reduce the saturated fatty acid (SFA) content of the final product ( e.g . up to 20% in spreads), while maintaining suitable physical properties ( e.g . melt profile).

#8

And even if they are fine, if they are just in processed stuff, the items themselves are probably not good as we know food industry, they love to put all kinds of more or less “abnormal” things into their products I probably don’t want.
And anyway, I consider my items with both saturated and unsaturated fats pretty great for me (at least they seem to work well ;)) so good luck to persuade me to eat a bunch of processed food, no matter how unusually decent ones…