Trans fats and breast cancer
What you eat could make the difference in whether or not you're risking breast cancer.
A whopping 75-percent-risk difference, in fact.
A study that included almost 20,000 women was done over a seven-year period. At the beginning of the study, the women provided blood samples and a completed dietary questionnaire. During the study, 363 cases of breast cancer cropped up. A correlation was found between an increase in blood levels of trans-monounsaturated fatty acids and a 75 percent boost in the risk of developing breast cancer.
And gentlemen, don't think you're immune from the negative effects of these trans fats: researchers recently reported that trans fats could boost your risk of prostate tumors, albeit the non-aggressive kind, by 100 percent. I don't want to see you with unnecessary tumors of any kind.
While some food companies will argue that trans fats can be found naturally in dairy, that's just the thing: they're natural. What you want to stringently avoid are the ones that go through ridiculous over-processing so they'll basically preserve foods sitting on the store shelves from now until Kingdom Come.
And keep an eye out for the clever marketing that many of the food companies are employing: "0" trans fat doesn't quite translate into the "zero" that we all know and love. These companies are still allowed to say zero, even if there's half a gram per serving. No, not in the whole box, but per individual serving. You could rack up a whole lot of trans fats without even realizing it.
By the way, here's a little history-lesson reminder. It wasn't too long ago that many doctors were celebrating man-made trans fats as safe and healthy. And there are still plenty of doctors who fail to warn patients about the hazards of these dangerous fake fats, now that the truth is known.
Cook from scratch as much as possible—it's the only way to be sure of what you're getting. You don't need clever marketing—you need healthy food that isn't going to cause cellular destruction and premature death.
