Free Food for Life: How the New Four Food Groups Can Save Your Life by M. D. Neal Barnard Page B

calories, these turkey slices come out with a whopping 45 percent fat. And beware of words like
light
and
lean
. Oscar Mayer Light Beef Bologna calls itself 80 percent fat-free, but by percentage of calories it is actually 64 percent fat. The words
meat
and
low-fat
should never be used in the same sentence.
S ATURATED V EGETABLE O ILS : A S B AD AS L ARD
    Animal products are not the only source of saturated fats. A few vegetable oils are naturally high in saturated fat. These are known as
tropical oils:
palm oil, palm kernel oil, and coconut oil. As far as your cholesterol level is concerned, they are as bad as lard. To remember which ones they are, picture a palm tree, with coconuts on the top. These are products to avoid.
    Other vegetable oils can be chemically saturated by a process called
hydrogenation
. These solidified fats are then used in products such as margarine, and like animal fats, they will stimulate your liver to make cholesterol. Commercial bakers prefer hydrogenated vegetable oils because they last longer on the shelf. The shelf life of a Hostess Twinkee is lengthened by the partial hydrogenation of the vegetable oils with which it is impregnated. Your shelf life, however, will not be improved if you make such foods part of your routine. Look on the labels of foods you buy, especially baked goods, for the words
hydrogenated
or
partially hydrogenated
. This means that thevegetable oils were chemically solidified into saturated fats, which will turn on the body’s cholesterol-production machinery.
    Liquid vegetable oils are much better than animal fats and tropical oils, but all fats and oils are natural mixtures of saturated and unsaturated fats. Beef fat is about half saturated fat and the remainder is a mixture of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat. Corn oil is mostly polyunsaturated, but about 13 percent of it is saturated fat. That is a lot less saturated fat than is found in beef or chicken, but it still contributes to heart problems. The same is true of olive oil: about 13 percent of it is saturated fat. What about peanut or safflower oils? Seventeen percent and 9 percent, respectively. While vegetable oils do less harm than animal fats, none of them do your coronary arteries any good. This chart shows the percentages of saturated fat in different kinds of fat:

    The saturated fat is the part that increases your cholesterol level, although the unsaturated parts have health problems of their own, including a tendency to increase free-radical production and an impairment of the immune system.
    At this point, you may be wondering which oil you should use in cooking. Unfortunately there is not sufficient evidence to call any of them health foods. Liquid oils are certainly better than animal fats, tropical oils, and hydrogenated oils, but the best advice is to learn to prepare foods with littleor no added fats or oils. In Chapter 8 , we show how to do just that, with cooking techniques and ways to modify recipes that minimize oils.
D ON’T B UY THE F ISH S TORY
    What about fish? All fish products contain both cholesterol and saturated fat. Although a substantial amount of fish fat is unsaturated, all fish fats are mixtures too, and they all include saturated fat. Of the fat in chinook salmon, for example, about 24 percent is saturated. And while fishes vary tremendously in their fat content, virtually all—haddock, halibut, cod, bass, catfish, and the rest—contain a similar mix of saturated and unsaturated fat. The saturated portion is usually about 15 to 30 percent of total fat content. This is lower than beef and chicken, but still a problem. See Table 4 .
    Also a serious problem, fish fats are unstable chemicals, encouraging the production of free radicals—the very sparks that start the process of plaque formation, as we will see shortly.
    Table 4      Percentage of Fat in Fish
     
Total Fat Content
% of Fat That Is