Fit Fare

Once upon a time, bakers used butter …

Anyone who has ever baked a cake, cookie, biscuit or pastry, knows that baking needs fat, and traditionally, the best fats to use have been butter or lard.

These are saturated fats, and have become deeply unfashionable in the popular mind as being unhealthy because saturated fats increase the level of bad cholesterol (LDL) in the blood, increasing the risk of heart disease.

Saturated fats are usually obtained from animal sources, but can also be found in plants, such as coconut oil and palm oil.

So what have people used instead?

Polyunsaturated fats are liquids at room temperature and come from vegetable sources like seeds, such as sunflower oil. Liquid oils aren’t usually very easy to use in baking (though there are some recipes and techniques for this).

Liquid vegetable fats (sunflower oil, olive oil) can be turned into solid fats through a process called hydrogenation, in which hydrogen is pumped into a blend of polyunsaturated fats to harden the oil.

Hydrogenated fats became popular last century. Solid saturated fats were convenient for manufacturers, could be made from cheap oils, and prolonged the shelf-life of the products made from them. Margarines were developed for use as alternatives to the saturated fats like butter and lard, and were - unfortunately - promoted as being healthier.

Why ‘unfortunately’?

Many of the margarines and shortenings that were manufactured last century contained trans fats.

Trans fat, or partially hydrogenated fats, are a byproduct of the hydrogenation process. These trans fats became notorious because while both saturated and trans fats increase levels of LDL cholesterol, trans fats also lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol). A double whammy … it is now generally accepted that trans fats are worse than the saturated fats they were intended to replace. These have been banned in America for a while now, and have recently been banned in the UK too.

Some trans fats occur naturally in the animal products like butter, cheese, beef fat … but it is thought that in the low levels that these occur, there is no health risk.

So … what now?

Well, manufacturers have worked hard to reduce and remove trans fats in their products, though this does have cost implications.

Non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening can be made from palm oil, but this brings its own problems . Palm oil does contain oleic acid, a healthy fatty acid, as do the ‘healthy’ olive and canola oils … but it also is high in saturated fats. Also, the increased demand for palm oils is endangering the habitat of some of our best-loved wild animals, such as orang-utans. Do you really want orang-utans to become extinct so that you can have a cheap cookie?

There’s also the new kid on the block: interesterificated fats. These are vegetable oils that have been chemically modified so that they are more solid - like hydrogenated fats, but without the trans fats. However, research is beginning to show that these fats increase the level of sugars in blood, and reduce the insulin levels, increasing the risk of diabetes. And it reduces the level of good cholesterol.

Confused?

Everyone needs some fat in their diet. But which kind to choose - saturated, poly-unsaturated or interesterificated?

There isn’t a right answer - you’ll need to make your own mind up. But why not choose one of the following, depending on what you’re using it for:

• butter (my choice for baking and spreading)
• a margarine high in poly-unsaturated fats (not hydrogenated) and oleic acid (my husband’s choice, though you can’t bake with his preferred spread)
• or olive oil (my choice for frying and bread-making).

But it might be worth investigating coconut oil, which is apparently very good for you because it:

• is active against pathogenic viruses, bacteria and fungi
• is a good source of lauric acid, which boosts the immune system
• protects against heart disease and cancer
• has the lowest energy content of any culinary oil - and so it is less fattening
• guards against premature aging and wrinkles
• is loaded with antioxidants
• has anti-inflammatory qualities.

For more information on coconut oil, I’m going to look at The Coconut Diet but it sounds pretty good to me so far!