Cut Trans Fats From Your Diet
The way to make businesses change their practices are to either regulate via the government - which isn't happening under Bush - or to make their current practices unprofitable. An individual cannot make a business unprofitable - give of take that woman who pretended to find a human finger in her meal at Wendy's - but we can each do our little part.

Cut Trans Fats From Your Diet

There are four kinds of fats: monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, saturated fat, and trans fat. Monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat are the "good" fats. It is generally accepted that consumption of saturated fat should be kept low, especially for adults. Trans fat (which means trans fatty acids) is the worst kind of fat, far worse than saturated fat.

Partial hydrogenation is an industrial process used to make a perfectly good oil, such as soybean oil, into a perfectly bad oil. The process is used to make an oil more solid; provide longer shelf-life in baked products; provide longer fry-life for cooking oils, and provide a certain kind of texture or "mouthfeel." The big problem is that partially hydrogenated oil is laden with lethal trans fat.

How can you tell what has trans-fat in it? Just check the label for the word "partially hydrogenated" in any of the ingredients. You probably cannot cut out all trans-fats, because they come in every food from cocoa mix to tortillas. You can, however, cut down on them. You can still buy packaged foods - just check the label. Now that this issue is getting some publicity, you can find foods that say "No Trans Fat" on the label.