Nutritional Science Episode One: The Biology of Trans Fat by Nicole

Nutritional Science Episode One: The Biology of Trans Fat by Nicole - August 2018 Scholarship Essay

The podcast is about Nutritional Science and how we as a community can take basic steps to understand our health. Understanding how it works allows us to be proactive and improve our health in the comfort of our own home. This podcast is unique because we will take you down an exciting road of understanding our fascinating bodies, which ranges from comprehending how the environment affects our DNA and improving our heart health by eating unsaturated fats. We further the education by understanding the types of diseases we can develop and how our body is actively trying avoiding them. It is never too late to make a change in ones health and after each episode you too will be scientist. The first episode of the podcast will be about trans fat, how it interacts with the body, and how it can be counteracted.

The body needs fat for many reasons. For instance, it provides twice the amount of energy as protein or carbohydrates. Fats are vital to forming the cell membranes, myelin sheaths, and allow the body to absorb essential vitamins and minerals. They impact the production of hormones within the body. Not all fats are beneficial to the body. In fact some fats are detrimental, such as trans fat.

Trans fat was discovered in the 19th century by a chemist who bubbled hydrogen gas through vegetable oil with a nickel catalyst. Adding hydrogen to the vegetable oil structure stabilized the oil. Trans fat was initially created because it seemed like a healthy alternative to saturated fat but further studies showed otherwise. Today this process is used to increase the shelf life of food products, such as cookies, chips, and doughnuts. Unsaturated fat is chemically different to saturated and trans fat because of the double bond between carbon atoms resulting in fewer hydrogen atom bonds, where as the saturated fatty acids have a single bond between carbon atoms. Trans fat is made when the unsaturated fat’s double bond between carbon atoms is partially hydrogenated causing one of the hydrogen atoms to flip to the other side of the chain resulting in one hydrogen atom on each side of the chain. For every 2% of trans fat consumed the risk of heart disease is increased by 23%.

Furthermore, trans fat raises the cholesterol levels of LDL, which can lead to plaque building up on the walls of the arteries, narrowing the blood flow of the arteries causing blockages. Cholesterol is broken down into two types, LDL (Low density lipoprotein) and HDL (High density lipoprotein). Unsaturated fats can reduce the LDL levels in your body and raise HDL. The two types of unsaturated fats, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, are found within plants and cold-water fish.

Increasing the intake of these unsaturated fats can help prevent Atherosclerosis because it prevents the buildup of plaque on the walls of the arteries and returns it back to the liver to be broken down. Atherosclerosis can be found anywhere in the body, and is caused when plaque build up in the body narrows the arteries and reduces blood flow thus limiting the flow of oxygen. Atherosclerosis can lead to multiple diseases such as, Coronary Heart Disease, Carotid Artery Disease, and Peripheral Artery Disease.

HDL functions to remove the cholesterol within the plaque lining arterial walls and can help prevent Atherosclerosis development. Trans fat is believed to lower the HDL levels within the body and raise the LDL. High levels of trans fat can lead to diabetes because it can promote insulin resistance and creates an overreacting immune system. For these reasons, trans fat is often referred to as the worst type of fat, since it significantly increases the risk for heart disease, stroke, and type 2 Diabetes.

Despite the best intentions when first developing trans fat in the 19th century, evidence has supported the need to remove it from our daily diet. Due to trans fat raising LDL and decreasing HDL levels it can lead to Atherosclerosis, stroke, heart attack, type 2 diabetes and death. To counteract the effects of trans fats we should be incorporating more unsaturated fats into our diets.