Margarine: "Food From Hell"

In Japan we have these cute little plastic foods in all the windows of restaurants showing the customers exactly what they can order. I have always wanted to get them and send them back to my friends and family in NA. Whenever people come to Japan they are amazed by how life-like they really are. Plastic food...

Plastic food is not all that original. In fact, we've been filling our cell walls with it for decades. We call it ... margarine, and it is quite possibly one of the worst "foods" we have ever been eaten. All of the marketing over the decades that pushed butter off the table because it was "fat" and we all know (have been known?) that "fat is bad" so of course a "fat replacement" was a welcome addition to the family.

Then came the "cholesterol is bad for you" craze (it's still here, and the cholesterol-lowering drugs, and cutting back on foods that naturally contain cholesterol (i.e. MEAT) has done more harm to us than a lot of other things (except possibly margarine!).

Margarine DOES NOT ROT. Fat is SUPPOSED to go rancid, it is SUPPOSED to rot. But when you can leave margarine in your garage for an entire year and it never even picks up a teeny bit of "off scent", you know that something is amiss. How do they extend the shelf-life of foods in convenience stores? They use non-rotting margarine instead of butter! Yaaaay! You gotta love the businesses out there who are making life more convenient for us by killing us softly with their "soft spread".

Here are just a few brief references that I took from my friend and associate Khanada's The Science of Health Index website, to show you exactly why you should be sticking with butter, going back to butter, or at the very least, dramatically cutting back on your margarine (and more!)

Margarine is plastic. It is a food that has been plasticized through changing the molecular structure. No wonder it doesn't go bad! We can landfill plastics and they last for, what? A billion years? I wonder if once we die of all of the horrendous illnesses-related to margarine, if "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" will no longer apply to us because even the grubs and worms won't touch our corpses!?

Margarine a low-grade plastic:
A plastics engineer would call margarine "plastic food," - meaning that margarine's molecular structure resembles a low-grade plastic. Reference: Peak Performance, Radiant Health: Moving Beyond the Zone, Noble Publishing, 2001, page 190.

Margarine and trans-fats:
Margarine contains a tremendous amount of harmful distorted EFAs called trans-fatty acids. Reference: Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, pages 103, 105.

Margarine and heart disease:
Margarine eaters have twice the rate of heart disease as butter eaters. Reference: Nutrition Week 3/22/91 21:12.

Hydrogenation is the chemical addition of hydrogen to another chemical. When applied to oils, the process turns the healthy essential oils into dangerous trans fatty acids, which are unhealthy for humans. References: Fats that Heal Fats that Kill, Udo Erasmus, Published by Alive Books, Burnaby, BC, Canada, 01 January, 1999, ISBN: 0920470386,1-800-661-0303.

Trans-fats produced by hydrogenation:
The process of hydrogenation requires a metal catalyst, like nickel, and is stopped when the margarine looks butter-like, without regard to the "unnatural" fat by-products, which have been produced (1). These by-products include trans fatty acids, lipid peroxides and other potentially toxic compounds. Some large studies have been published, which suggest that ingestion of trans fatty acids are considered a risk factor for heart disease (2). Trans fatty acids can also block the body’s ability to use EFAs in the production of eicosanoids and they may lessen the transfer of the life giving nutrient, oxygen, across cell membranes (3).

The trans-fat, cancer connection:
In 1939, The American Journal of Cancer published that eating trans-fats produced cancer when exposed to ultra-violet rays. Trans-fats are defined as polyunsaturated fats containing Essential Fatty Acids that have been damaged/distorted by heat and processing.

Vision and trans-fats:
Expect vision-related problems when there is too many Trans fats. Reference: Essential Fatty Acids and Eicosanoids, 1992, pgs: 107-115; Invest. Opthalmol. Vision Science, 1992, 33(11): 3242-3253.

Trans Fats in the Brain
Studies show that the trans fatty acids we eat do get incorporated into brain cell membranes, including the myelin sheath that insulates neurons. They replace the natural DHA in the membrane, which affects the electrical activity of the neuron. Trans fatty acid molecules disrupt communication, setting the stage for cellular degeneration and diminished mental performance. Reference: Lipids, 1994; 29/4:251-58.

Heart disease and trans-fats:
Researchers found that Trans-fats are more detrimental to the ability of blood vessels to dilate, a marker for heart disease risk. Trans fats reduced this blood vessel function by a third – and lowered (good) HDL-cholesterol by a fifth – compared to saturated fats. Both increased (bad) LDL-cholesterol levels. "This suggests that trans fatty acids increase the risk of heart disease more than the intake of saturated fats," concluded the scientists at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. It suggests that if French fries were cooked in saturated fat instead of in hydrogenated vegetable oils, they would probably be safer. Reference: Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, July 2001, American Heart Association/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins January 1995, Division of Cardiology, UCLA School of Medicine, 0833 LeConte Avenue, Room 47-123, CHS, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1679.

Trans-fats produced by hydrogenation:
The process of hydrogenation requires a metal catalyst, like nickel, and is stopped when the margarine looks butter-like, without regard to the "unnatural" fat by-products, which have been produced (1). These by-products include trans fatty acids, lipid peroxides and other potentially toxic compounds. Some large studies have been published, which suggest that ingestion of trans fatty acids are considered a risk factor for heart disease (2). Trans fatty acids can also block the body’s ability to use EFAs in the production of eicosanoids and they may lessen the transfer of the life giving nutrient, oxygen, across cell membranes (3).

References:
1. Erasmus U. Fats and Oils. Alive Books, Vancouver, Canada, pp 84-89, 1986.
2. Mensink RP, Katan MB.  Effect of dietary trans fatty acids on high-density and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels in healthy subjects.  N Eng J Med 323:439-445, 1990.
3. Kinsella JE, et al.  Metabolism of trans fatty acids with emphasis on the effects of trans, trans-octadecadienoate on lipid composition, essential fatty acids and prostaglandins - an overview.  Am J Clin Nutri 34:2307-2318, 1981.

Margarine really IS the quintessential "food from hell".

You can "butter me up anytime".

I love you!

Cam

P.S. I just attached a pdf article on margarine if you would like to read just a wee bit more at your leisure. Feel free to download it.

P.P.S. I just attached a Zip file of all of my Soy information. If you are a lover of soy, please read this, and then make an eddicated decision, OK? Not everything you've been told by the "Soy Board" is on the "up and up". I'd say that convincing us to consume more soy is akin to torturing us. And if the group that does it is the Soy board, we might want to register this torture as "soyboarding". It's worse than "waterboarding" because they indoctrinate us so that we want to do it to ourselves! Then they don't have to take the blame, the soyturds!

Attachment: Margarine - Transfatty Acids.pdf
Attachment: Soy Information.zip