but not anymore. they used to be my drug of choice, i mean food, of choice.
yesterday i had some, which i have not done for many months.
after tasting them, i was really disappointed. they didn't taste good to me at all.
i could only taste how bad the oil was they were fried in.
i don't know if the oil was really bad or if my palate now is a lot more sensitive to fresher food.
in a way i am glad they tasted so bad, because french fries aren't really good for you.
now, i know you all know they are bad for us, but we continue to eat them.
but do you really know why...
(this would be the point when you should stop reading if you don't want to know why they are so bad for you)
it's not the potatoes, or even frying the potatoes that makes them bad, but it is heating and cooling of the oil over and over, which makes it deadly.
did i say deadly, yup. besides the cholesterol and all the other bad things oils and fats are known for, there is a little acronym that's the most important of all. PAH's Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. and when talking about french fries, this is why they are so bad.
as you heat and cool oil and repeatedly use it to cook foods, a chemical change happens and lipid profile chemically changes and turns the oil into cresol. cresol is a toxic free radical and basically hooks on to the end of your DNA and begins to mutate your normal cells. it starts to respond abnormally and grows rapidly. then as it mutates it looses it's internal protective cell suicide (the P53 gene which means that if it goes a.w.a.l. it kills itself) so the cell will not die and our bodies can't eat up fast enough to get rid of all the mutated cells and so it keeps growing and the Telomerase enzyme which our bodies produce, give it immortal growth and life.
and that folks is how cancer starts. not just from french fries, but anything that is carcinogenic.
Once again Europe is always ahead.
"The European Commission has set maximum levels for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in foods-particulalry benzo(a)pyrene-following an October 13 vote by the European Union's (EU) Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health. The new rule will apply to certain foods containing fats and oils, and foods where smoking and drying processes produces high levels of PAH contamination, as well as foods such as fish."
"Of the more than 100 PAHs found in the environment, at least 18 have been identified in cooked food. Depending on which experts are looking at the data, either five or 12 of the 18 cause cancer in laboratory animals.(The rest cannot yet be classified as cancer-causers or not.)
Most exposures to cresols are at very low levels that are not harmful. When cresols are breathed, ingested, or applied to the skin at very high levels, they can be very harmful. Effects observed in people include irritation and burning of skin, eyes, mouth, and throat; abdominal pain and vomiting; heart damage; anemia; liver and kidney damage; facial paralysis; coma; and death.
Cresols are what's bad about cigarettes too, and remember they only "may cause cancer in rats" how many studies do we need.
No comments:
Post a Comment