When I was a young kid learning about nutrition in school, I was taught that peanut butter was good for me. Now, it’s not entirely bad for our health, but regular peanut butter isn’t as nutritious as natural peanut butter.
The difference is that regular peanut butter is made by hydrogenating vegetable oil. Hydrogenation is a process designed to preserve foods. To make them last longer. In fact, it takes oily foods and turns them from a liquid form into a solid form.
This is why natural peanut butter has the oil separated from the ground up peanuts as opposed to regular peanut butter which is one solid paste like substance. If you think about it, it’s actually a very innovative idea.
The Cost of Preservation
Hydrogenated foods taste really good and they last longer. Unfortunately, once the altered oil is in our stomach, it is difficult for us to digest. This altered oil is also known as trans fat. Of course, if a food product has less than one gram of trans fat then the nutrition label does not have to list any trans fat.
So if hydrogenation is mentioned in the label, it is best to avoid eating that food. Even in small amounts, consuming trans fat can be dangerous to our health. Especially to those with diseases such as high cholesterol, diabetes, or obesity.
Ease up on the Fried Foods
Trans fats can also be created by using certain shortenings when deep frying. That’s why we always hear that fried foods are bad for our health. Once inside of our bodies, the hydrogenated vegetable oils cause damage to our cardiovascular system.
There are other detrimental health effects caused by trans fats but that is the most prominent. When our cardiovascular system is damaged, we don’t breathe right. We don’t get enough oxygen flowing through our bodies.
This makes us tire out very quickly. That’s why it is so easy for people today to lose their breath while climbing just one staircase. Well, that and the fact that we as a species don’t get as much natural exercise as we used to.
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