It’s so important to eat good fat while you’re trying to conceive, pregnant, and breastfeeding. It’s even more important to avoid trans fat, because it can actually displace healthy fats and can have serious consequences. If you’ve heard you need to avoid trans fat, but don’t know where it lurks or what it’s in, read the ingredients on packaged food. If it says hydrogenated oil, it contains trans fat- even if the nutrition info says 0 grams trans fat per serving. This is a loophole the FDA created which allows a food processor to say zero trans fat per serving if there is less than half a gram of trans fat in that serving.
This poses two major problems.
1. There IS trans fat in the food; 1/2 a gram is not zero.
2. Nobody ever eats just one serving of food out of a box or bag!
All it takes is 2 grams of hydrogenated oil per day to cause anything from infertility to birth defects to diabetes to cancer- you get my point. Those 1/2 grams add up! I don’t like being strict about anything, but this is one area where I don’t bend. Don’t eat food containing trans fat, and don’t feed it to your children. It is toxic poison and should not go into our bodies. In the past, when I didn’t realize how bad it was and still consumed it, I had heart palpitations after eating anything that contained trans fat. That can’t be good!
On a positive note, here are things you can do to help your fertility or growing baby’s brain, and for overall health:
- Eat walnuts, olive oil, avocado, eggs and salmon
- Take a high quality fish oil supplement– this contains DHA which makes babies smarter and gives them better vision!
One thought on “What is Trans Fat?”