What is the difference between partially hydrogenated oils and hydrogenated oils? Which 1 is most unhealthy?

Answer 1

Both are unhealthy. Partially Hydrogenated oils are the ones that stay liquid at room temp or cooler. They are artery clogging killers. Stay away from them. They are the trans fats that everyone is removing from their products.

Answer 2

1. Not much.
2. Either or both.

1. Sometimes food companies would like their food products to be shelf-stable, or to last a long time on the store and home shelf. We have found that if we bubble hydrogen gas through the vegetable oil at high temperatures, the hydrogen will bind to the unsaturated carbon atoms in the oil and "hydrogenate" them. Sometimes they only hydrogenate some, sometimes they hydrgogenate them all (and thus make a "saturated" fat out of a formerly unsaturated one). When they do that, the oil will harden at a higher temperature (it'll look like Crisco or lard, in other words), but it won't go bad or rancid nearly as quickly or easily.

There isn't much of a difference between a long-chain fat with one carbon not saturated and no carbons unsaturated. for the food manufacturers , though, a fully hydrogenated fat is too hard and waxy for their use, so they use partially-hydrogenated fats because they're much easier to use.

For us, they're not all that different because actually the problem for our health does not lie there.

2. It's because in the process of hydrogenating the oil, well, the fat--that's what an oil is--in the proces of hydrogenating it, it bends or twists in an unnatural way, making it a "trans" fat instead of the natural "cis" fat (these are chemists' terms to describe the shape of a fatty acid. A "cis" fatty acid is straight. a "trans" fatty acid has a 180-degree twist in it). When we metabolise trans fats, our liver makes much more LDL cholesterol and much less HDL cholesterol. The trans fats also cannot be used by the body to produce the good prostaglandins, thromboxanes, and other rather strong health mediators that we need, and so they raise the level of inflammation in the body. Our enzymes, made to fit the natural "cis" fats, son't work on the "trans" fats. People who eat even the partially hydrogenated fats have been shown to have about twice the risk of cardiovascular disease (heart and stroke) as those who do not.

Inflammation is part of the prcess of atherosclerosis, and the hydrogenated oils and fats encourage that process.

It's all in the shape of the fatty acid, whether it is the natural "cis" shape or the dangerous "trans" shape, that does the damage.

I don't remember the runner who, back in the 70s said, "If the fire is hot enough it'll burn anything," but he died of a heart attack. Too many trans fats.

Stay away from them all and you'll have much better health.