Butter Beats Margarine -Roger Mason

In the early 1900's scientists found out vegetable oil could be hardened to imitate butter by a sophisticated process of intense pressure, hydrogen gas, and rare metal catalysts. This produced "hydrogenated" fats also known as "trans fatty acids". These do not exist in nature and must be made in the laboratory. Hydrogenated, and partially hydrogenated, fats are ubiquitous (they're everywhere!) in our foods now, and it is almost impossible to avoid them. The fast food restaurants are the worst source of all, as they don't want to tell you they are in the food. Outlawing these is not the answer. Some cities have outlawed them. More laws are never the answer. Honest labeling with warnings is the answer. Those great pits we call fast food restaurants need to put notices up that they cook with hydrogenated oils. 
 
It's hard to believe the makers of this garbage actually promoted hydrogenated fats as healthier than natural fats like butter. Today many people still believe this stupidity. Look how many margarines are still sold in the grocery stores. How stupid are people anyway?

(answer- really stupid!)  Hydrogenated margarine is still a big seller. Our bodies know what saturated animal fat is, and can deal with it in small amounts. Our bodies do not know what trans fatty acids are, and cannot deal with them. They are unnatural, synthetic, manmade, harmful, indigestible, and foreign to our systems. Trans fatty acids end up as excess cholesterol and deposits on our arteries. Heart and artery disease are the biggest killers of all by far. These ersatz, psuedo-fats are literally killing us. 
 
Currently Americans and Europeans eat up to 15 grams of trans fatty acids a day, which is about 5% of their total calorie intake. Americans eat an astounding 42% fat calories on the average, and most of these calories come from saturated animal fats and hydrogenated oils. Then we wonder why we have such stratospheric coronary heart disease? We look to our medical doctors to butcher and poison us to "cure" our high cholesterol levels, strokes, and heart attacks. If you want to know how to have a healthy heart and circulat-ory system please read my Lower Cholesterol Without Drugs and Zen Macrobiotics for Americans. Find one of those old Nathan Pritikin books at your local library. Nathan reversed clogged arteries with a natural diet and walking. He was not a medical doctor, but healed people with heart conditions by simply feeding them a low fat, high fiber diet based on whole, complex carbohydrates like brown rice, whole grain bread, oatmeal, whole grain pasta, sweet potatoes, and a wide variety of beans. Then they would simply walk as much as they could up to an hour a day. That's all- low fat diet and walking. If he was alive today using proven supplements and natural hormone balance the results would be much more dramatic. The current Pritikin clinics are an abomination and serve red meat and synthetic sugars.

 
Hydrogenated oils are the very worst fat you can eat, yet people gobble up endless tons of them every year. READ YOUR LABELS! If the product contains hydrogenated oil don't buy it. Ask the restaurant manager where you eat if the bread, rolls, pizza, corn chips or whatever have hydrogenated fat in them. You can bet anything you get out of a fast food outlet is full of hydrogenated oils.  
 
We won't list all the international human studies that have been published in medical journals proving that trans fatty acids cause coronary heart disease. Countless ones have been published for decades and prove unequivocally that they raise total cholesterol, raise bad LDL cholesterol, and lower good HDL cholesterol. They also raise a blood marker called "Lp(a)", or lipoprotein a, which is a predictor of heart disease. This has been demonstrated at the University of Kuopio in Finland, Tufts University in Boston, Wagengin Agricultural University in the Netherlands, in the famous Framingham Study, the University of Oslo in Norway, and many other clinics around the world.  
 
In the Netherlands, doctors studied 698 postmenopausal women and actually took biopsies of fat from their bodies. They concluded, "The adipose concentration of trans fatty acids showed a positive association with breast cancer." The more trans fats they ate the more breast cancer they got. Do you doubt the same results would be found if they did the same study with men and prostate cancer? 

What can you do? Stop eating in those grease pit fast food restaurants. They sell more hydrogenated fats than anyone. Read your labels and stop buying food that contains these. Refuse to eat any food that contains hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil. Learn to cook without  butter or margarine. Do not use vegetable oils in excess either. There are non-hydrogenated margarines such as Smart Balance® and Spectrum Spread® which can be used in moderation occasionally. They are made of palm oil which solidifies when refrigerated. 
 
Diet lowers cholesterol. Diet is everything here. There is no cholesterol in any plant food on earth. You should also take proven, natural, inexpensive, and safe, supplements such as beta-sitosterol, soy isoflavones, guggul gum (temporarily), flax oil, beta glucan, and other synergistic supplements like vitamin E, All Your Minerals, lecithin, and beta carotene. Why anyone would take a toxic, expensive, prescription statin drug you see advertised on TV by those ghoul doctors? These don't extend life one day, but they turn your liver into pudding. It just makes you wonder if the real issue here is not merely ignorance, but outright self destruction. Anyone who takes statins deserves exactly what they get.  Stop eating hydrogenated oil. Read your labels. Write to the manufacturers of the foods you like that contain them and tell them you won't buy them anymore. It is actually less harmful to eat butter on your bread, and fry your food in lard than it is to eat these unnatural, synthetic, harmful fats.