Comments on: Substitutions in Recipes for a Healthy Heart – Cholesterol Lowering Tips

By: hendo

hendo — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 02:42:22 +0000

French fries, potato chips, etc. used to be deep fried in animal fats. In the early 90s it was realized that the animal fats were wreaking havoc on the health of consumers. Producers transitioned to healthier vegetable oils, but those didn't taste as good and in order to be stable enough and suitable for deep frying the vegetable oil needs to be hydrogenated. The process of hydrogenation creates TRANS unsaturated fats (which disrupt the bodies ability to regulate cholesterol), which are bad.

They probably still advertise “No trans fats” to distract people from the fact their products contain plenty of [...]

By: bandi

bandi — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:07:08 +0000

The secret behind truly EVIL pie crust is lard. Everyone cringes when they hear it, but you will never get flaky crunchy crusty goodness from shortening, butter, margarine or any other kind of fat. I had been wondering why my pie crusts and pastries weren't as good as grandmas til she clued me in that she used the cheap shortening that is mostly lard, I had been using Crisco which is only vegetable fats.
Hope this helps.

By: kotyre

kotyre — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 15:40:26 +0000

Hmmm, you might have better luck asking this in the math & science section, because this is a chemistry question. It has to do with how easy the molecules are to break down, I believe. Sugars (like honey, cane sugar, glucose syrup, corn syrup…) are all very easy to break down and metabolize, but some more so than others. I think glucose is the easiest – for mountain climbing, you can get these (nasty!) packets called Gu, and I think they're just solid glucose, so you can get the quickest energy – yech!

Anyway, along that same continuum are the [...]