- Saturated Fat on Trial – Richard Feinman
- Saturated Fat – Manmade? Interesterified? Caution!
- Saturated Fats – Need Omegas
- Saturated Fat and Heart Disease Risk – Dariush Mozaffarian
If you think that eliminating man-made trans-fats means we’re not using man-made saturated fats in our foods, then think again . . . about a process that makese a fat interesterified:
Listen to Dr. Kalyana Sundram (30 minutes)
This talk comes from a recent Webinar that Dr. Sundram was part of at Wayne State University in Michigan.
Dr. Kalyana Sundram is Nutrition Director for palm oil research at the Malaysian Palm Oil Board in Kuala Lampur. He’s also one of the researchers behind the Smart-Balance butterlike spreads. Sundram has been studying a process that makes more liquid oils more solid, through becoming interesterified. And he’s been looking especially closely at soy oil and palm oil, two of the world’s most widely used food oils. In research such as this 2007 article from Nutrition & Metabolism, and in more research studies, he’s finding that unlike naturally occurring solid fats, such as beef tallow and palm oil, oils made more solid through interesterified processing seem more likely to raise total cholesterol, raise LDL cholesterol, raise blood sugar levels, raise blood insulin levels, and to lower HDL. There’s a lot to sort out here, and at some point, we’ll provide a transcript of this talk, plus some followup conversation to help explain it.
