Hi I'm Dr. Tracy marks a Psychiatrist
and I make mental health education videos.
In recent videos, I've talked about how processed foods
are bad for you and contribute to depression and anxiety.
Today I'm explaining one of the reasons
for that, and that's the presence
of trans fatty acids in your food.
To understand what trans fatty acids
are or trans fat for sure, let me explain fatty acids.
Fatty acids are fats that are essential compounds
that your brain and body need.
So membranes are made from fatty acid,
and that's just one example of their essential function.
There's two types, unsaturated and saturated.
Saturation refers to how many hydrogen atoms
are connected to the carbon backbone
of the compound.
When all of the carbons are bonded to hydrogen,
it's fully saturated.
Fully saturated fats are solid at room temperature.
Examples of these are animal fats
like bacon drippings when they cool and coconut oil.
Unsaturated fats have carbons
that are not all attached to hydrogen,
but instead some of them are connected
to each other with a double bond.
This double bond changes the shape of the compound,
it puts a kink in it.
Unsaturated fatty acids are liquids at room temperature.
Examples of these are olive oil,
canola oil and sunflower oil.
If only one hydrogen is missing
or there's one seat left on the bus,
it's called monounsaturated.
If there's multiple seats left on the bus
for a hydrogen to bind, it's called polyunsaturated.
Here's where the trans fatty acids come into the picture.
In the past years,
saturated fats were associated with heart disease
and clogging your arteries.
And there was a push to substitute
the saturated fats for unsaturated.
And there's still a debate though,
as to the health effects of saturated fats.
The current science supports
that they're not as bad as we once thought.
The problem with using unsaturated oils though,
is that they have a low smoke point
which means that they don't stand up as well to high heat.
They oxidize and go rancid,
and they don't have a nice texture.
Who wants to pour oil on their toast?
So manufacturers found a way to change the oils
to make them solids, and they do this by hydrogenating them.
This process chemically adds a hydrogen to the compound.
Now, you can get olive oil in solid form
and spread it on your toast as a butter substitute.
Hydrogenating the oil has some benefits.
It raises the smoke point allowing you to cook with the oil
at high temperatures multiple times
before you need to change it.
It also improves the texture of baked goods
and extends the shelf life of packaged goods.
That's the good, but here's the bad.
When oils are fully hydrogenated,
all of the carbon spots are filled
and you have the saturated form of the original oil,
but when it's partially hydrogenated,
you still have a double bond and a seat on the bus.
And the end result is a trans fat.
Trans fats are what cause the health problems, why?
Because trans fats have a different shape
from the cis version of the oil.
In the chemistry world, trans and cis
have different meanings
from how we use them to discuss gender.
Trans compounds have the functional part
of the compound on opposite sides,
and cis compounds have the functional part of the compound
on the same side.
I don't want to get too complicated,
but suffice it to say that your body doesn't recognize
or accept the trans version of the acid
because of the altered shape.
The different shape makes it incompatible
for some of the body's functions,
like being a building block for a cell membrane
or fitting into the receptor of a protein enzyme.
That's where the problem lies on a cellular level,
but on a broader level,
because these trans acids are shaped differently.
they become pro-inflammatory,
they increase your risk of heart disease
and also increase your risk of depression and anxiety.
They do this by increasing an inflammatory chemical
called a cytokine.
Cytokines interfere with your nerve circuitry
and block the production of neurotransmitters
like serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine.
Cytokines also increase glutamate production
which is a chemical that activates cells.
Too much activation overexcite cells
which can lead to anxiety.
So trans fats are something you want to significantly reduce
from your diet.
The reason I say reduce and not completely eliminate
is because some trans fats are naturally occurring.
Animals that ruminate regurgitate their food
as part of the digestive process.
And that's a different rumination from mental rumination.
Through this process,
their gut bacteria produce trans fats
that gets stored in their body and in their milk.
Ruminating animals include cattle, goats, and deer.
So eating red meat and dairy products
will give you a small amount of trans fat,
but not nearly as much
as the synthetically produced sources.
Where do you find these sources?
You can find trans fats in things like margarine,
vegetable shortening, packaged snacks, pre-made baked goods,
breakfast bars, commercially fried foods,
and coffee creamers.
I say commercially fried foods because not all frying
is bad, it depends on the oil that's used.
Safflower oil is an unsaturated oil
and it has a high smoke point.
The smoke point is the temperature at which the oil
when heated, starts to smoke and break down.
And when it breaks down it produces free radicals.
Free radicals cause cell damage through oxidation.
I call oxidation your body's rusting process.
So all this to say,
if you don't know what kind of oil was used to fry the food,
it's best to stay away from it.
In 2015, the FDA ruled that trans fats
were not considered safe and banned them
from use for food manufacturers,
and they required them to remove trans fats from the foods.
The deadline for removing this trans fat
was initially 2018 and it got extended to 2021.
So the use of trans fat in food is phasing out,
but here's the catch, manufacturers in the US
can legally say that a product has zero trans fat
if the serving size contains 0.5 grams or less.
So a nutrition label that says zero trans fat,
doesn't necessarily mean zero,
it can mean just less than 0.5 grams per serving.
And depending on the serving size that zero trans fat
can add up.
Let's say you buy a small package of cookies.
You intend to eat the entire bag because it's not that big,
but the serving size is a third of the package,
which is probably two or three cookies.
So if you eat the whole bag you eat three servings.
If that bag really has 0.5 grams of trans fat,
then your three servings adds up to 1.5 grams.
How much is too much for the day?
Good question, the American Heart Association
recommends that less than 1% of your daily calories
should come from trans fat.
If you eat 2000 calories,
then no more than 20 of those calories
should come from trans fat.
One gram of fat is nine calories.
So that means your 2000 calorie diet
should have no more than two grams of trans fat.
Well, you're almost there with that small bag
of zero trans fat cookies,
have a glass of milk with those cookies
and you're done for the day.
So a better way to keep up
with this is to read the ingredients,
and look for partially hydrogenated oil.
That ingredient tells you that the food has trans fat,
even if the amount falls under the threshold
for reporting it,
but here's a possible glitch even with that.
I went back and look at some labels of products
that I used to buy
that I know contained partially hydrogenated oil,
like my coffee creamer that I don't use anymore.
And now that label says hydrogenated oil,
the partial word is gone.
Now, I don't know if that means
that they changed the fully hydrogenated
or if they're just purposely leaving it vague.
Why does it matter?
Because fully hydrogenated oils don't have trans fat.
They're still not great because they've modified the oils
to become fully saturated,
but at least they don't have the trans configuration.
A common example of this is peanut butter.
Have you ever bought peanut butter
that was labeled as natural,
and you notice that you have to stir it before you use it
because the oil separates?
It separates because it was made with an unsaturated oil.
But brands like Jif are sweet and creamy,
and they don't separate
because they use fully hydrogenated oil
to make it stay in solid form.
In fact, here's a list of the ingredients
on the Jif website.
You see it has peanuts, sugar,
and fully hydrogenated vegetable oil
made from rapeseed which is canola oil and soybean oil.
And Jif at least makes it clear
that it's fully hydrogenated.
The takeaway here is that in the interest
of reducing your risk of depression and anxiety,
keep your intake of trans fat to a minimum.
This means watching your intake of foods
made with butter and dairy, eliminate packaged foods
that contain partially hydrogenated oils
and be leery of packaging that doesn't specify
if it's partial or a fully,
and minimize deep fried foods like french fries,
onion rings, and chicken nuggets,
especially if they're made from a commercial source
where they tend to reuse the oils.
Take a look at this video on the Mediterranean diet
for depression and this one on the anti-inflammatory effects
of omega fatty acids,
which happen to be polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Thanks for watching, see you next time.