I can't avoid hydrogenated fat

Because my body is in a life-long love affair with it. It's in the foods I enjoy the most and I have said time and time again that I will never change my lovely eating habits. Nevah! If there's Coke, chocolates, cookies and cheese balls around, you can be sure I'll be eating those for dinner until supplies run out. And even at this age, I'm pretty sure I'll "fail" that marshmallow test as well. I will find a way of getting that second marshmallow and this confidence I ooze comes from years of experience.

Anyway I've just realised exactly HOW bad hydrogenated fats (and partially hydrogenated fats; yes, they're bad too and not just partially). I bought some chocolate candies from the local convenience store down the road and was prancing back to the office, enthusiastically popping them candies in my mouth one after the other, when I decided to look at the ingredients. I've decided I'm going to be a pretend health freak temporarily. The candies were screaming HYDROGENATED FAT. Hello, Cardiac Arrest. I nearly choked on my treats.

From what I've read, and I tend to read in a blind panic when hypochondria kicks in, hydrogenated fat (also called trans fatty acids) is created by injecting hydrogen in liquid cooking oils to make them either semi or all solid. Like a stick of butter. That's pretty much what it'll look like inside you. Hydrogenated fat has no nutritional value AT ALL, it just makes packaged "goods" last longer. Like Oreo cookies (why GOd why??). Like breakfast cereal, a, if not the ultimate, chris staple. HF puts the crisp in those potato chips. Yummy. Moreover, it's not like saturated fat that just raises bad cholesterol, it also lowers good cholesterol, the type that clears arteries. How horrible is that? Doubly.

Food labeling is still a bit of an issue as some restaurants (cough Mcdonald's) refuse to provide their consumers a complete list of ingredients that go into their food while also refusing to use healthier oil in the preparation of it. WTF right? No law has been passed regarding that yet. And while some companies do label their goods (oh how noble of them), they do so in a misleading manner. For instance, let's say a product's label says it's got 0 trans fat in it. Good right? I'm not sure what our lovely country has to say about this health issue but according to some laws (US), companies are allowed to label their products 0 trans fat if a serving of the product contains only half a gram of it or less. So yeah, chances are you're still going to be a fatty.

Where does that leave us? Briefly, nowhere healthy: We're eating ourselves to death. But I think if we just eat an apple every day, we're sorted.

I've been writing about health stuff so much lately that I've caught the attention of some health blogging community site and they've asked me to join as a contributor. They urge me to join but only if I deem my writing appropriate for the topic of health. Hehe I don't know what that means. It could very well just be some stupid spam thing but, boy, getting that email really made my day. Haha I'm still chuckling about it now. And I ate the bad candies after all, and it made me feel both good and bad about myself. It was an unusual experience, I may have to experiment some more before reaching a well-founded conclusion.