How Does Cholesterol Support Your Health?

Why FDA Finally Took a Stand Against Trans Fats

Consumption of trans fat, which for decades was touted as a healthier alternative to saturated animal fat, radically increased in the mid-1950s.

And according to Dr. Kummerow, rates of sudden death from heart disease have faithfully risen right along with trans fat consumption. Fortunately, the science showing trans fats to be FAR more harmful than saturated fat is finally starting to get the recognition it deserves.

In 2009, Dr. Kummerow filed a citizen petition with the FDA calling for a ban on synthetic trans fats. In the petition, he noted that:

“Trans fat leads to the reduction of prostacyclin that is needed to prevent blood clots in the arteries. A blood clot in any of the coronary arteries can result in sudden death.”

The FDA is required to respond to such petitions within 180 days, but nearly four years later, it still had not responded. So, last year he filed a lawsuit against the agency.  Interestingly enough, it wasn’t long thereafter that the FDA announced it was considering removing partially hydrogenated oils—the primary source of trans fats—from the list of “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) ingredients.

The agency gave the industry a total of 120 days to comment on the proposal. The FDA noted that there are 30,000 items in the American diet that contain trans fats. That should give you an indication of just how prevalent these dangerous fats are!

Basically, if you eat processed foods, you’re likely eating trans fats. Many products that claim to be “zero trans fat” simply have portion sizes that are so ridiculously small that the trans fat falls below the permissible limits.

Trans Fats 101

Structurally, trans fats are synthetic fatty acids. Fourteen of them are produced during the hydrogenation process. (They are not present in either animal or vegetable fats.) As explained by Dr. Kummerow, trans fats prevent the synthesis of prostacyclin,  which is necessary to keep your blood flowing.

When your arteries cannot produce prostacyclin, blood clots form, and you may succumb to sudden death. Avoiding trans fat is therefore imperative for cardiovascular health. Vaccenic acid, found in cow’s milk, while a naturally-occurring trans fat, has an entirely different composition and does not cause the adverse health effects associated with hydrogenated oils.

“It’s a matter of complex chemistry that makes a difference,” Dr. Kummerow says. “The Food and Drug Administration has for years confused those two fatty acids. One causes no problem; the other one does.”

Trans Fat and Oxidized Cholesterol Are Responsible for Heart Disease

Dr. Kummerow recently published a paper showing that there are two lipids (fats) in our diet responsible for the formation of heart disease. The first is trans fat found in partially hydrogenated oil.

The other one is oxidized cholesterol, formed when cholesterol  is heated. The primary source of the latter is fried foods. Powdered egg yolk is another example of a food where heating has damaged the fat to the point of creating harmful oxidized cholesterol. Oxidized cholesterol (again, not dietary cholesterol in and of itself) causes increased thromboxane formation—a factor that clots your blood.

“You have prostacyclin that keeps your blood flowing, and thromboxane that clots your blood. You have to be very careful about the ratio, the amount of each in the blood. That’s the simple explanation [for what causes heart disease],” Dr. Kummerow says. “In 2011, 325,000 people died from sudden death… and we’re going to keep on seeing people die of sudden death [unless trans fats are removed entirely from the diet].

In 1958, I showed that if I fed a rat trans fat and then took it out of the diet, in a month, the trans fat is… metabolized out. There’s no more trans fat in the body. If today the FDA decided that no more trans fat should be in the diet, next month, people who have been eating this fat will have lost the trans fat. It would have been metabolized. There would be – next year and the year after – less death from sudden deaths.”

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