. . . And Done
Aug. 7th, 2007 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanarillSo today was filled with methanol, used as a cleaning solution. We were using it to clean oil off of car parts. The oil was icky, but the methanol dissolved skin oils and left my skin alligator-dry. I had to keep going and putting lotion on my skin.
Wearing the latex gloves tomorrow, nasty and sweaty or not.
And they do. To give you an idea of how much they do, we’ll talk about why producers like saturated fats and then give an example of a typical saturated fat in disguise.
It’s all back to do with stacking. Saturated fats do it very well, so even outside a body, they can pack really close to each other. Why they do, even outside a body, has to do with the 3D shape of the molecule, and I’m not going into it. Suffice to say that they do.
Now, remember way back in elementary school, when you were being taught about the phases of matter? Solid, liquid, gas, each one of them less dense that the other. It’s generally used to explain why popcorn pops. Turn that around and you can see that almost all substances will take up less space as a solid than as a liquid*. But it means another thing too: anything that’s dense enough, regardless of temperature, will be a solid. This is why, despite being nearly as hot as the surface of the Sun, the Earth’s core is solid: the pressure down there forces it to be a solid, even though it would like to spread out and become a liquid.
Saturated fats like to pack. For their volume, they are relatively heavy, and at room temperature, they are solid. Unsaturated fats, which can’t pack as closely, are liquid at room temperature. Companies like saturated fats because in addition to having all of the properties that oils do, they are solids. It means you can use them in your food and the fats won’t all run out the bottom to lie in a nasty greasy pile. They will stay in your food keeping it lovely at moist and tasty.
These days, however, people are a little bit more health-conscious. They’ll look on the labels for things that sound healthier. So the companies asked themselves: well, what sounds healthy? Soybean oil? That sounds good. Let’s use that.
But of course soybean oil is an oil, which means that it’s unsaturated; a liquid at room temperature, it hasn’t got all those nice properties. How to deal with that?
Simple! Add hydrogen. Saturate the fat. Of course, this will get rid of the health benefits, but as long as consumers don’t know that, who cares?
So the process of “hydrogenating” was invented. Hydrogen is bubbled through an oil such a soybean oil in the presence of a catalyst. This catalyst does the same thing as the enzymes in your body, breaking the double bond and adding hydrogen, without getting used up itself. Once the fat has been saturated enough that it will remain solid, they stop adding hydrogen. There are still some unsaturated fats mixed in, but the greater percentage are now saturated**.
That, my friends, is “partially hydrogenated soybean oil.” It’s actually less healthy than the same amount of butter, because of all the trans-fats that occur as a nasty side effect of the hydrogenating process. Margarine is what happens if you take a vegetable oil and saturate it until it won’t saturate anymore***. And of course, people think that it’s healthy because, well, it comes from a plant, doesn’t it?
No. Really, it doesn’t.
This is why, if you’ve stuck with me this far, you will check the ingredients list for partially or fully hydrogenated anything. I’m sure you will be both surprised and disgusted by how common it really is. And if you decide to lose weight, you’ll stop buying all those hydrogenated products, and start cooking at least some meals for yourself. My personal recommendation is either a very Indian or very Japanese diet. Both are highly flavorful, but the flavor comes from spices rather than from fats.
This is the end of my week-long explanation of fat. I hope you now have a better understanding now of your own body, of why it’s so difficult to stick to a diet (I’m overweight, too), and why you should always check the ingredients list. It may not, and probably won’t, change your buying and eating habits. But at least you’ll know
*With the exception of water, because water breaks rules.
**This is a lie. They don’t so much saturate the fats entirely as add hydrogen in the right places to make them trans-fats, which stack.
***Which doesn’t mean that there aren’t still unsaturated fats in there. There just aren’t many.
Wearing the latex gloves tomorrow, nasty and sweaty or not.
And they do. To give you an idea of how much they do, we’ll talk about why producers like saturated fats and then give an example of a typical saturated fat in disguise.
It’s all back to do with stacking. Saturated fats do it very well, so even outside a body, they can pack really close to each other. Why they do, even outside a body, has to do with the 3D shape of the molecule, and I’m not going into it. Suffice to say that they do.
Now, remember way back in elementary school, when you were being taught about the phases of matter? Solid, liquid, gas, each one of them less dense that the other. It’s generally used to explain why popcorn pops. Turn that around and you can see that almost all substances will take up less space as a solid than as a liquid*. But it means another thing too: anything that’s dense enough, regardless of temperature, will be a solid. This is why, despite being nearly as hot as the surface of the Sun, the Earth’s core is solid: the pressure down there forces it to be a solid, even though it would like to spread out and become a liquid.
Saturated fats like to pack. For their volume, they are relatively heavy, and at room temperature, they are solid. Unsaturated fats, which can’t pack as closely, are liquid at room temperature. Companies like saturated fats because in addition to having all of the properties that oils do, they are solids. It means you can use them in your food and the fats won’t all run out the bottom to lie in a nasty greasy pile. They will stay in your food keeping it lovely at moist and tasty.
These days, however, people are a little bit more health-conscious. They’ll look on the labels for things that sound healthier. So the companies asked themselves: well, what sounds healthy? Soybean oil? That sounds good. Let’s use that.
But of course soybean oil is an oil, which means that it’s unsaturated; a liquid at room temperature, it hasn’t got all those nice properties. How to deal with that?
Simple! Add hydrogen. Saturate the fat. Of course, this will get rid of the health benefits, but as long as consumers don’t know that, who cares?
So the process of “hydrogenating” was invented. Hydrogen is bubbled through an oil such a soybean oil in the presence of a catalyst. This catalyst does the same thing as the enzymes in your body, breaking the double bond and adding hydrogen, without getting used up itself. Once the fat has been saturated enough that it will remain solid, they stop adding hydrogen. There are still some unsaturated fats mixed in, but the greater percentage are now saturated**.
That, my friends, is “partially hydrogenated soybean oil.” It’s actually less healthy than the same amount of butter, because of all the trans-fats that occur as a nasty side effect of the hydrogenating process. Margarine is what happens if you take a vegetable oil and saturate it until it won’t saturate anymore***. And of course, people think that it’s healthy because, well, it comes from a plant, doesn’t it?
No. Really, it doesn’t.
This is why, if you’ve stuck with me this far, you will check the ingredients list for partially or fully hydrogenated anything. I’m sure you will be both surprised and disgusted by how common it really is. And if you decide to lose weight, you’ll stop buying all those hydrogenated products, and start cooking at least some meals for yourself. My personal recommendation is either a very Indian or very Japanese diet. Both are highly flavorful, but the flavor comes from spices rather than from fats.
This is the end of my week-long explanation of fat. I hope you now have a better understanding now of your own body, of why it’s so difficult to stick to a diet (I’m overweight, too), and why you should always check the ingredients list. It may not, and probably won’t, change your buying and eating habits. But at least you’ll know
*With the exception of water, because water breaks rules.
**This is a lie. They don’t so much saturate the fats entirely as add hydrogen in the right places to make them trans-fats, which stack.
***Which doesn’t mean that there aren’t still unsaturated fats in there. There just aren’t many.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-08 09:57 am (UTC)Though I haven't commented much on the other posts, this has been really fun and helpful to read. So... thanks! :D
no subject
Date: 2007-08-08 11:11 am (UTC)Heh. Chemistry is all about where dem bitches at.