Cellulite Suspect #1: Trans Fat

The fat you eat (along with the dimpled fat you wear) is a critical component of our investigation. As we’ve been learning, cellulite forms as a result of lymphatic congestion. If you are eating unhealthy fats or have poor fat digestion, you are likely to have a problem with cellulite. Here’s why.

When you eat a fatty meal, the fat molecules are absorbed by lymphatic vessels in the small intestine. Smaller particles, like amino acids and sugars, are absorbed directly into the bloodstream but larger particles, like fat, must first go through the lymph before entering the bloodstream at the heart.1

What’s Clogging Up Your Lymphatic Pathways?

Last week, we talked about saturated fats and how they are an essential part of an anti cellulite diet.  But if saturated fats are good for us, why are so many women still suffering from lymphatic congestion and the dreaded blight?  One answer is ‘trans fats.’

Trans Fats are made from polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Since these oils are liquid at room temperature (unlike traditional baking fats, such as butter and lard), manufacturers figured out a way to use hydrogen atoms to rearrange the chemical structure, turning the product from a liquid to a solid.

Industrialized vegetable oils and hydrogenated fats are new additions to the human diet.  Our bodies don’t process them the same way they do traditional saturated fats.  Here’s what lipid biochemist Dr. Mary Enig says about trans fats:

When one hydrogen atom is moved to the other side of the fatty acid molecule during hydrogenation, the ability of living cells to make reactions at the site is compromised or altogether lost. Trans fatty acids are sufficiently similar to natural fats that the body readily incorporates them into the cell membrane; once there their altered chemical structure creates havoc with thousands of necessary chemical reactions—everything from energy provision to prostaglandin production.2

How To Avoid Trans Fats

With all the buzz surrounding recent efforts to include trans fats on food labels, I hope by now you are keeping an eye out for this cellulite suspect while making your rounds at the grocery store.

The first step is to switch from processed butter substitutes to the real deal.  Quality butter from cows who graze on pasture is a healthy traditional fat. There’s no good reason to avoid it by eating margarine.  If you like your butter to be spreadable, invest in a butter crock.

But even if you ditch the Country Crock and watch out for trans fats on food labels, you still could be ingesting unhealthy amounts of trans fats.  Beware of food manufacturers who claim zero trans fats on their ingredient labels. According to the FDA labeling guidelines,

If the serving contains less than 0.5 gram [of trans fat], the content, when declared, shall be expressed as zero.3

Now don’t be too surprised, but those wily food manufacturers have been known to adjust their portion sizes to make it in under the .5 threshold.  Who eats the recommended serving amount, anyway?  A more effective approach is to look for the words “hydrogenated” or “shortening” on the ingredient label, although I wouldn’t be surprised if those clever food manufacturers have figured out a new term for their hydrogenated fats by now.

Trans fat also pops up in foods that aren’t usually accompanied by an ingredient label.  Common sources include baked good, fried foods from restaurants, even fortune cookies.  If you are determined to implement an anti cellulite diet, start by paying attention to the amount of trans fats that sneak their way into your meals each day.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at how trans fats wiggled their way into the Standard American Diet, from the unique perspective of a biochemist who was at the cutting edge of early trans fat research.

*This post is part of Fight Back Friday hosted at FoodRenegade.

Tagged as: causes