Fats for the Memories

More adventures in culinary arts. This week at NGI covered grains, beans and Basic Quality Ingredients-Fats.

The fats fascinated me. We drilled down to the nitty gritty of the chemical composition of fatty acids. Saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and the dreaded trans fatty acid. Sounds dry, but I was transported back to the college course that, had if I had known then what I known now, could have changed the course of my life. Instead, it took about 15 years to gestate and is one one the key reasons I find myself in cooking school today.

The year was 1992 and the class was Chemistry of Foods at Williams College. It was a gimme class--science for non-sciencey people. I had actually done well in math and science in high school, but had just burnt out and was indulging in a liberal arts bender. But this was something I could sink my teeth into: enriched nutrients come from a nozzle, fortified with iron means iron shavings (dip a magnet into your oatmeal and see for yourself), and transfats will kill you.

Now today we know that transfats lower good cholesterol, raise bad cholesterol, and generally wreak havoc on our delicate ecosystems. But back in ’92, it was still the awesomest of awesome additives. Fat without fat! Better living through chemistry! Well, our professor walked us through the composition of fats and fatty acids--hydrocarbon bonds, free-floating electrons, double carbon bonds--and how the bonds determine the shape of the molecule. It was the first time I had a glimpse into the alchemy of the chemical to the physical. Molecules move through our bodies through an elaborate lock-and-key system, and there was the problem.

The health miracle of transfats was created by the artificial partial hydrogenation of fatty acids that resulted in an unnatural kink in the shape of the molecule. The key will no longer fit, so eat all the fake fat you want. (Olestra, anyone?) Our professor had one simple argument, a countless number of environmental conditions led to our bodies’ intricate chemistries. Since almost no transfat had ever been found in nature, even if we know what an artificial substance won’t do, we have absolutely no idea what it will do.

And now we know. Thanks, professor.