Trans Fatty Acids and Inflammation

Food is any material eaten to supply nutrition to an organisms. Food is generally of animal, plant or even fungal source, and includes necessary nutrients, including proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, or other minerals. An average human being can consume from two to six thousand calories per day, depending on his activity level. A dog or cat can eat twice that amount, but a cat’s digestive system is considerably more efficient than a human’s.

Modern day diets tend to be less healthy than those of our ancestors who lived in a less advanced society with less refined foods and greater emphasis on nutrition. The trend towards dieting and weight loss has created some confusion as to which foods provide the nutrients needed by the body. Some foods are considered to be good for human consumption, while others, like alcohol, are dangerous. Sugar is probably the best known of these bad foods, because it is not easily digested and considered almost a “dangersome” food. As food becomes more scarce, the quest for more nutritional foods has created a huge market for supplements, with claims that they will give us all the nutrients we need.

However, if one looks carefully at these supplements, they generally contain only a small amount of the substances he claims to contain. Most food supplements are made from oils and other ingredients, which are broken down to simple sugars and fats to provide the energy for exercise. When these fats are separated from the molecules of food, the trans fatty acids and other essential compounds are not found. This means that these products do not provide any health benefit on their own, but can only help provide the missing nutrition that the body needs.