What Is Transfat-Free PUFA Oils That Are Still Liquid At Room Temp?

Many years ago, transfat was the villain of the month, or of the year. It wasn't long before cooking oil started coming out that loudly touted how TRANSFAT-FREE they were. Then, I could not find any article on the web that explains fully how these oils became transfat-free and if they became so, if they were better for us.

At that time I took fish oil as a supplement, and I believed the American Heart Association's lies about saturated fat being bad, and about PUFA being good.

Looking back, I still wonder how those cooking oils (presumably corn, soya, and canola oil) came to be labelled as transfat-free:

1. Were those oils not transfat-free before oils came to be labelled as transfat free? Was it just a label change, but the product did not change?

2. And if there was a change in the oils, what was done to make these cooking oils transfat-free? As I understand it, transfat free would mean the oils were either 100% PUFAs, or were 100% saturated (being fully hydrogenated).

3. Since these oils are liquid at room temperature, they cannot be fully hydrogenated as being fully hydrogenated would mean they would be solid at room temperature. Being liquid, are these oils 100% PUFAs then?

4. If these oils are 100% PUFAs, how come they are being used for cooking? Won't they have very low flash points, such that they burn easily? Yet they don't.

5. Is the seed oil industry taking us for fools?

6. If it's a lie, how can they cover up such a big lie?

Can someone in the know about these things be able to explain these things?

 

I think it's just label change.

Probably they weren't changed. Probably they are never 100% PUFA an seldom 100% SFA.

Liquidity/solidity/viscosity isn't just about saturation.
Vegetable oil - Wikipedia

Table above shows smoke points too - I haven't studied the relationship between composition and smoke point, but you could if you wanted.

Um. No. Of course not, they would never do that.

Advertisers/marketers often use lots of tools for overcoming resistance to the downsides of the products for sale.
You can now also find 'gluten-free' labels on lots of foods that have never had gluten in them. I've seen 'paleo' labels on meat.

AIUI, when you try to hydrogenate liquid seed oils (varying mixtures of PUFA, MUFA and maybe a bit of SFA) into more solid ones to make margerine etc, you get some transfats as a side-effect.

I know transfats are seen as terrible, but I don't know if having a little transfat in fat that has been made more saturated by hydrogenation is worse than eating the original oil that had more PUFA in it.

AIUI, there are also some naturally occuring transfats - I think conjugated linoleic acid may occur naturally in milk fat, and probably isn't all bad.

If I've got this wrong, I hope someone will correct.

 

Yes, even if coconut oil has higher saturation, its smoke point, at 175C, is a lot lower than palm oil, soybean oil, corn oil, and canola oil. I think it's mostly because coconut oil has a high proportion of short chain fatty acids.

I'm with you there. It just seems like all the hullabaloo about transfats is predicated on the thinking that PUFAs are good, so anything that has some saturated fats in them, as transfats are, are seen as unhealthful.

Seems to me that there's one thing left to do. Deprogram from the world the idea that PUFAs are good, and saturated fats are bad.

Then the seed oil makers will fully hydrogenate all their oil, and declare in their labels "PUFA-Free."

 

I think the optimal changes might be more far reaching.

I'm not sure whether those incidental transfats are all good, and there's at least one thread discussing the process of hydrogenating coconut oil that mentions the risk of nickel being introduced from the equipment used.

If seed oils are not good food, then there might be good reasons to transition towards growing more other foods instead.

 

No natural fat is 100% any thing, PUFA, MUFA or Saturated. They are all a combination. Coconut Oil is the most saturated, at 93%, but even it has some PUFA. MCT Oil and Fully Hydrogenated oils can be 100% saturated (or very close).

For some oils, I'm sure it was basically just a label change, kinda like how you will see all sorts of products than never cointained any gluten, from Potato Chips to Vodka, labeled "Gluten Free." If there were hydrogenated fats (most likely Crisco and such), they have likely been reformulated.

The bigger issue is if Trans Fats are really as dangerous as claimed. I dug into the studies, and realized that the whole Trans Fat phobia isn't based on a whole lot. All of the fats that contained significant Trans Fats started off as high PUFA oils. Many of the studies were observational, noting that people who had the most Trans Fats in their tissues had the most heart issues. When RCT studies were done on rats that induced problems from "High Trans Fat Oils," the oils STILL contained a lot of PUFA.

Now.... does that mean Trans Fats were the issue, or were they a marker for a higher consumption of PUFA (partial hydrogenation would still leave quite a bit of PUFA), or maybe a problem with the oils themselves, other than the fat saturation levels? Canola Oil, for example, comes from the rapeseed, which has high levels of Erucic Acid, which appears to be a PUFA that is highly toxic to the heart. It is mostly removed for Canola Oil. Every high PUFA oil has to go thru significant processing to make it not only safe to eat, but also keep it from tasting nasty.

 

So, basically, the cooking oils that got a label makeover to 'Transfat Free' are PUFA-laden oil that have high flash point and are pretty much used for cooking, and even withstand the high heat involved in deep-frying. And by withstand I mean that they don't cause the oil to smoke. This means the oils are oxidized greatly by the high heat. Proof that these oils are oxidized is that these oils get rancid and need to be thrown away, as continued use will give the fried foods a rancid taste and smell.

But post- awareness of transfats by the public, did processed food manufacturers make any change to their raw materials or processes in an effort to remove transfats? If so, did it make processed foods any better to eat? Isn't the reason in using transfats to make products have the right texture, viscosity, and mouth feel, and this has to be made from PUFA oils because the processors were trying to avoid the stigma of having to attach a nutrition data label with a high saturated fat content in it? This was because having a high saturated fat content makes a product shunned by the saturated fat-avoiding public?

What fats did the food processors decide to use to replace the vilified transfats with? Did they end up having to use more saturated fats in the end, since PUFAs don't really have the mouth feel and the viscosity needed to make the food products appealing?

 

I think when hydrogenating oils to increase the SFAs, a small proportion tend to become transfats as a side effect.

 

I don't think they made any changes to the raw materials.... I think they just stopped hydrogenating the oil, for the most part. They did not go back to natural saturated fats, which would eliminate soooo many problems (next time your in a store that sells, chips made with coconut oil, compare the three ingredients on the plain chips to the plain chips fried in high PUFA oils).

At the same time the PUFA acceptance campaign has been going on, they have been training people to think that "healthy" foods should be disgusting. Taste and mouth feel are likely less important now, thanks to the propaganda.

 

Looking at some products that require oil to be solid at room temperature, I see palm kernel oil, palm oil/canola oil, and hydrogenated palm kernel oil being used. But not canola oil by itself. I don't see partially hydrogenated oils being used anymore. I looked at chips ahoy, oreos, kitkat, and milk way.

But with Hostess Twinkies, nothing's changed, which makes this a good product for survival, where any food will do rather than nothing. It's still got good ol' partially hydrogenated oil and or animal/fat (soya oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil, beef fat).

I doubt that people can be trained to like disgusting food easily, not that it can't be done. But you'd need to convince them that they're really good for your health. Or they'd have to acquire the taste after seeing their parents liking it so. Like moldy cheese and beer.

 

You just listed a partially hydrogenated oil right there. Few oils are ever fully hydrogenated, as they become solid as a brick at room temp. Coconut oil is an exception, due to the high amount of MCTS.

Apparently, you've never gone down the soy milk aisle. Or been in a health food store.

Some of it is that foods just aren't as good as they used to be. Like, say, McDonald's french fries. Always pretty tasty, but far, far better back when they were fried in tallow. I guess "disgusting" isn't the right word in that case, but "inferior" works pretty well.

 

How does the high amount of MCTS make coconut oil an exception?

 

But soy milk is one of those things people take thinking it's healthy. They do so because the yukkier it tastes, the more health they think it confers on them. But people are far from enjoying its taste. They haven't been trained to like its taste.

Come to think of it, I haven't been to a health food store in a long time. I know what they sell there, that's why I no longer go there.

I looked at Wikipedia on tallow. And now I won't automatically assume tallow refers to oil from cows and ox. Tallow can also refer to oil from cows mixed with oil from pigs. Damn, ever since Congress in the 80s allowed for food to be called food more in a general sense than in its traditional sense, the meaning of words for food has expanded to include many other things.

 

I used to eat soy 'milk' because it made porridge taste good enough and I didn't tolerate dairy. I quite liked the taste. But it was probably all the other things in it, not the soy itself, that tasted good.

 

MCT oil is 100% saturated, but not solid at room temperature. Longer chain fully saturated fats are more dense, and solid. That is why the melt point of CO is so low, even though it's the most saturated natural fat.

 

That was my original point. See the quote "they have been training people to think that "healthy" foods should be disgusting."

 

But I'm still interested in knowing why coconut oil is the only oil that can be made 100% saturated by hydrogenation. What does the high proportion of MCTs have to do with helping enable 100% saturation?

 

I never said other oils couldn't be made nearly 100% saturated. Just that they would be rock solid at room temperature, with Coconut Oil being an exception, due to the MCTs.

You can see the difference in this video (it's a promotional video from Cargill, but shows the differences)-

 

What you said was confusing, and I had to get clarification:

Few oils are ever fully hydrogenated, as they become solid as a brick at room temp. Coconut oil is an exception, due to the high amount of MCTS.

If I may rephrase, why is coconut oil exceptional in being one of the few oils than can be fully hydrogenated?

 

My comment was in regards to the solidity of the oil. That was clearly shown in the video. My comment about CO being an exception was in reference to the solidity of the oil, and I did not mean to imply that other oils can't be fully hydrogenated, as they can.

For example, you can find Coconut Oil listed at different melt points online. 76 degree is not hydrogenated. 92 degree is fully hydrogenated. There is also something called 110 Degree Coconut oil, but it is a mix of hydrogenated coconut oil and hydrogenated soybean oil. The higher melt point is achieved with the addition of an oil that has longer chain fatty acids.

 

Thanks for the clarification.

I was scratching my head once why the refined coconut oil smokes when I deep fry. And the PUFA oils don't. And yes, as you said, it's because CO has plenty of SCFAs and MCTs.

I didn't know how hard it is to find fully hydrogenated coconut oil anywhere retail. Even in the Philippines, a major coconut oIL producer. I had to call up an oils manufacturer, and be referred to an oils distributor, which only sells in tubs to food processors.

The only way I could buy is I get the minimum quantity of a 40kg tub. Yikes! Now, I have to call up a friend whose family processes copra to oil and see if I can buy a small quantity.

But it's good to know that some food processors use fully hydrogenated coconut oil. What's interesting is that I don't ever see any product labeled where coconut oil is listed as an ingredient.

I suspect that many pork rinds, or chicharon, are made deep fried in FHCO. But no one's telling, because no one's buying because everyone believes AHA's lies.