What is the difference between saturated fat and trans fat?

Question

what is olive oil? what if it is fried or used in cooked food?

Answer 1

Trans fats and saturated fats are similar, however trans fats are considered the greater health risk. Saturated fat is found meat, chicken, dairy products and tropical oils. Trans fats are created by the partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils. (Partial hydrogenation is when oils are processed, and become more solid.) The trans fats are in foods such as breakfast cereals, bakery products, snack foods, frozen foods, and margarines.

Olive oil is pressed from olives and is not processed. It contains anti-oxidants and is considered a "good" oil. When used for cooking, minimize the amount of oxidation (damage) to the oil by not overheating it. Here is a link that fully describes heat temperatures and cooking methods when using olive oil: http://www.oliveoilsource.com/cooking_olive_oil.htm

Answer 2

A fat is saturated when every carbon bond is occupied by a hydrogen atom. They are normally solid at room temperature and are very stable to cook with.
Trans fats are created through a process called hydrogenation. Polyunsaturated fatty acid chains have pairs of hydrogen atoms together along one side. By submitting these to high pressure and a nickel catalyst one hydrogen atom from each pair is moved to the other side of the chain. This makes the fat behave like a saturated fat in that it is solid at room temp but liquid when heated, but it is not a saturated fat. Although your body will try to use it as a saturated fat, it will not function the same due to a different molecular structure
Olive oil is a monounsaturated fatty acid which is relatively stable at temperature, but doesn't handle the high temperature saturated fats do. It is OK to cook with at a medium temperature.
Never cook with polyunsaturated oils as they go rancid, or oxidise, easily, if this hasn't already happened during the processing of the oil.

Answer 3

Saturated fat is natural and oftentimes found in animal meat. Trans fat is man made artificial fat. Saturated fat is a fat that the body recognizes and knows how to break down, so it isn't too bad in small portions. Trans fat is another story. The body does not recognize it and has a hell of a time digesting it. Any food label that lists "Partially Hydrogenated Oil" in its ingredients has trans fat in it. (Check the label even if it says it has none; companies can put 0 trans fat if the food has less than .5 grams per serving). If I remember correctly, I think it just gets stored as fat rather than used for energy by the body since they body doesn't know how to break it down.

Answer 4

I did a search for "saturated fat" and came up with some interesting looking results. However, this site, http://healthysteps.health.ivillage.com/fatsoils/saturatedfat.cfm , provides good information and more articulately than what I could give you. The only way I could get from section to section, while reading the article is to click on the links in the table of contents at the top of the first page.

While I don't think it's a good idea to take any amounts of fat in large quantities, olive oil is a good fat as is mad from olives and is better for cooking.

I hope this helps.

Answer 5

RE:
What is the difference between saturated fat and trans fat?
what is olive oil? what if it is fried or used in cooked food?