Scientific Literacy – Critical in a Capitalistic, Free Society.

Posted on | June 24, 2015 | Comments Off on Scientific Literacy – Critical in a Capitalistic, Free Society.

Mike Magee

This week the FDA announced that they are finally banning Trans Fats though food companies have three years to comply, which means three years to lobby for delay or repeal of the ruling.

Fundamental to the ineffectual delayed response has been purposeful confusion sown by the very organizations that invented these “foods” and portrayed them to an uncritical public as healthier than their natural alternatives.

This marketing challenge was made easier due to a rather fundamental and widespread level of illiteracy in America when it comes to basic chemistry. I tackled this issue, with respect to “Trans Fats” back in 2007, creating a video that helps explain what they are. You can view it HERE.

What are the basics you should know?

The Balanced Diet:

A balanced diet is about taking in the recommended portions of protein, carbohydrates and fats. The American Heart Association recommends that fats should make up 25% – 35% of our daily diet. The right combination of fats is critical to life. Fats are an important source of energy, they’re essential for growth and development, and they help regulate blood pressure, heart rate, blood clotting, nerve transmissions and temperature control.

What is a fat?

It’s mostly a chain of carbon and hydrogen atoms with a couple of oxygen atoms attached to the tail end. Carbon is the main player here, and because of the atomic structure of carbon, it is able to form four bonds to other structures. When you create a carbon straight chain you immediately fill 2 of the 4 spots for each carbon. That leaves two spots open.

Saturated Fat:

If you fill all the open spots with hydrogen, or saturate the structure with hydrogen, you’ve created a “saturated fat.”

Unsaturated Fat:

Dropping a couple of hydrogen atoms and using the extra spots to doubly connect two carbon atoms together creates what is called a “double bond.” Because several hydrogen spaces have been evacuated, an “unsaturated fat” has been created. If the chain has only one double bond, it is a “monounsaturated fat.” If the chain has two or more double bonds, it’s a “polyunsaturated fat.”

Trans Fat:

Now, if you take an unsaturated fat with a double bond, heat it and add hydrogen, you can change the position of the hydrogen atoms at the double bond. Usually they are both on one side of the chain, but the chemical reaction causes one hydrogen to cross over to the other side of the chain so that the hydrogen atoms now sit across from each other. We call this a “trans fat,” because “trans” means across.

History of Trans Fats:

We first started making trans fats when concerns surfaced about the health effects of saturated fats in butter. By hydrogenating vegetable oil – that is, adding hydrogen atoms to create trans fats – we discovered that liquid vegetable oil turned solid and could be sold as sticks of margarine. From the 1950s to the 1980s, we thought what we were doing was healthy. Tufts University nutrition professor Alice Lichtenstein has said that back then “anything was good if it decreased saturated fat consumption. But then studies began to question ‘trans fats’ too.”

Fats, Cholesterol, and Cardiovascular Disease:

Unsaturated fats, those with one or more double bonds, are good. They lower bad LDL cholesterol and raise good HDL cholesterol. Trans-fats, those liquid-to-solid hydrogen creations, are the evil twin. They raise LDL cholesterol and lower HDL cholesterol. Unsaturated fats lower rates of heart attack and stroke. Trans fats raise them. Saturated fats with endless straight lines of carbon and hydrogen that we worried so much about in the past? Still bad, but not as bad as trans fats. Saturated fats raise LDL and HDL, but the net overall effect is more harmful than it is good.

Take-Away:

In our capitalistic, free society, lack of scientific literacy makes us vulnerable to those who would profit at the cost of our healthy futures. We have seen this story play out in many forms – tobacco, food, energy. Profiteers first deny, then confuse, then resist, then delay. It’s a long and painful process to reverse the harm they have done. They are by no means innocent. But if there is a take-away, it is this. We are responsible for knowledge acquisition. If we are lazy; if we are distracted; if we are not dogged in the pursuit of truth; we will (as we have in the past), pay for our errors.

Knowledge must be acquired and transferred. Having trouble visualizing the chemistry above. Check out this video, and pass it on.

For Health Commentary, I’m Mike Magee.