WHAT MAKES US FAT - DANGERS OF FOOD PROCESSING (Documentary) education/nutrition/health Food processing is the transformation of raw ingredients into food, or of food into other forms. Food processing typically takes clean, harvested crops or butchered animal products and uses these to produce attractive, marketable and often long shelf-life food products. Any processing of food can affect its nutritional density, the amount of nutrients lost depending on the food and method of processing. Vitamin C, for example, is destroyed by heat and therefore canned fruits have a lower content of vitamin C than fresh ones. The USDA conducted a study in 2004, creating a nutrient retention table for several foods.[6] A cursory glance of the table indicates that, in the majority of foods, processing reduces nutrients by a minimal amount. On average any given nutrient may be reduced by as little as 5%-20%. Saturated fat is fat that consists of triglycerides containing only saturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids have no double bonds between the individual carbon atoms of the fatty acid chain. That is, the chain of carbon atoms is fully "saturated" with hydrogen atoms. There are many kinds of naturally occurring saturated fatty acids, which differ mainly in number of carbon atoms, from 3 carbons (propionic acid) to 36 (hexatriacontanoic acid). Trans Fat are a type of unsaturated fat, which is uncommon in nature but can be easily created artificially. Because their configuration is a double carbon--carbon bond, these trans-isomer (E-isomer) fatty acids are sometimes monounsaturated or polyunsaturated, but never saturated. Trans fats occur during the processing of polyunsaturated fatty acids in food production. In the vegetable and animal kingdoms, fatty acids generally have cis (as opposed to trans) unsaturations.

• published: 08 Nov 2013
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