I was still in college and had some friends over and we were sitting around drinking beer and eating some chips and salsa. One of the guys there worked at Wild Oats and was a health food junkie. He asked to see the bag of the corn chips. After reading the ingredients he said "You shouldn't eat that **** it has hydrogenated oil in it." And then went on some rant about how hydrogenated oils were bad for you. I was just thinking "This guy comes over to my house drinks my beer and tells me what I should and shouldn't eat. Prick."
But I'm a compulsive label reader. My mom taught me never to eat anything without reading the ingredients. I've been known to storm the kitchen at restaurants demanding to see the label for things. This is because I have always had severe allergic reactions to milk and any milk by-products like whey. So I knew partially hydrogenated oil was in nearly everything, it was one of the many ingredients things that I would pass on my search for "whey", "non fat dry milk", "butter" and other milk products.
So after that exchange I started noticing the correlation between eating things containing "partially hydrogenated oil" and the abdominal pain caused by my crohn's disease. Then I discovered that it wasn't just in packaged foods; It was in the PAM that they would spray on the griddle in the cafeteria. It was in the salad dressing. Anything fried was fried in hydrogenated oil of some kind. And I started figuring out that I would feel a lot better if I cooked food myself in extra virgin olive oil. I could still eat bread, cookies, cereal, whatever as long as I stuck to the high-end brands that didn't contain hydrogenated oils. But I never got rid of symptoms completely, so I figured it can't really be the cause of my Crohn's. Just something that bothers it.
The thing is, I was raised eating way more of this stuff than a normal person. I couldn't do milk so my mom used to put coffee rich on my cereal. I couldn't eat butter so she used margarine whenever butter was called for. Crisco for cooking, etc...
But for some reason I never really did any reading on hydrogenated oils until just today. What I am reading says that these molecules can actually incorporate themselves into the walls of your cells and allow "invaders" to enter the cell bodies unchecked! So, my theory is that if you are constantly eating this garbage you can end up with vulnerabilities all along the intestinal tract.
From: http://www.treelight.com/health/nutrition/PartiallyHydrogenatedOils.html
To me this is so much more attractive than the "leaky gut" theory that is so popular these days. If my intestinal walls were in fact permeable and leaking pathogens into my bloodstream constantly then why should my problems be limited to the digestive system. I should be messed up all over. But if it's merely the intestinal walls that are being infected and thereby recruiting the immune system to fight the infection that would explain why the inflammation is limited to the intestinal tract. And also why you can continue having symptoms for years after eating this stuff.
I think it also explains why so many people believe that grains, gluten and sugar are culprits in crohn's. To me, wheat, pasta, rice, oats, sugar are the safest of safe foods. But if I get that sugar from a cookie or candy bar made with hydrogenated fats then its not safe at all. And I suspect that most people who aren't in the habit of reading labels won't know the difference. You made pancakes from a store bought mix and felt terrible afterwards. You'd be forgiven for thinking it was the gluten in those pancakes, but no, it's the partially hydrogenated soybean oil added to the mix.
So anyway that's my new theory of Crohn's disease. I was surprised after doing a search that there had not been much discussion about hydrogenation or trans fats on this board. So I figured it was worth creating a thread. Please share your thoughts. I'm curious to learn more about other people's experience with this strange food product.
But I'm a compulsive label reader. My mom taught me never to eat anything without reading the ingredients. I've been known to storm the kitchen at restaurants demanding to see the label for things. This is because I have always had severe allergic reactions to milk and any milk by-products like whey. So I knew partially hydrogenated oil was in nearly everything, it was one of the many ingredients things that I would pass on my search for "whey", "non fat dry milk", "butter" and other milk products.
So after that exchange I started noticing the correlation between eating things containing "partially hydrogenated oil" and the abdominal pain caused by my crohn's disease. Then I discovered that it wasn't just in packaged foods; It was in the PAM that they would spray on the griddle in the cafeteria. It was in the salad dressing. Anything fried was fried in hydrogenated oil of some kind. And I started figuring out that I would feel a lot better if I cooked food myself in extra virgin olive oil. I could still eat bread, cookies, cereal, whatever as long as I stuck to the high-end brands that didn't contain hydrogenated oils. But I never got rid of symptoms completely, so I figured it can't really be the cause of my Crohn's. Just something that bothers it.
The thing is, I was raised eating way more of this stuff than a normal person. I couldn't do milk so my mom used to put coffee rich on my cereal. I couldn't eat butter so she used margarine whenever butter was called for. Crisco for cooking, etc...
But for some reason I never really did any reading on hydrogenated oils until just today. What I am reading says that these molecules can actually incorporate themselves into the walls of your cells and allow "invaders" to enter the cell bodies unchecked! So, my theory is that if you are constantly eating this garbage you can end up with vulnerabilities all along the intestinal tract.
From: http://www.treelight.com/health/nutrition/PartiallyHydrogenatedOils.html
To me this is so much more attractive than the "leaky gut" theory that is so popular these days. If my intestinal walls were in fact permeable and leaking pathogens into my bloodstream constantly then why should my problems be limited to the digestive system. I should be messed up all over. But if it's merely the intestinal walls that are being infected and thereby recruiting the immune system to fight the infection that would explain why the inflammation is limited to the intestinal tract. And also why you can continue having symptoms for years after eating this stuff.
I think it also explains why so many people believe that grains, gluten and sugar are culprits in crohn's. To me, wheat, pasta, rice, oats, sugar are the safest of safe foods. But if I get that sugar from a cookie or candy bar made with hydrogenated fats then its not safe at all. And I suspect that most people who aren't in the habit of reading labels won't know the difference. You made pancakes from a store bought mix and felt terrible afterwards. You'd be forgiven for thinking it was the gluten in those pancakes, but no, it's the partially hydrogenated soybean oil added to the mix.
So anyway that's my new theory of Crohn's disease. I was surprised after doing a search that there had not been much discussion about hydrogenation or trans fats on this board. So I figured it was worth creating a thread. Please share your thoughts. I'm curious to learn more about other people's experience with this strange food product.
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