Cholesterol

Frying with these oils - or baking them for an hour or more - is bad news for your health."Oxidation products can be pretty toxic," Marangoni says.

"You won't die on the spot, but they're not good for you.

They break down into highly reactive species and they go into your system.

They could react with your DNA and proteins if you eat a lot."Which oils should not be fried?

Any oil that is highly unsaturated, like soybean, flaxseed or sunflower oil.

You can also check an oil's label.

If polyunsaturated oils make up about 50 per cent of the oil, it is considered highly unsaturated."To heat them a little bit is OK," Marangoni says, "but to do continuous frying is not a good idea.

For a little bit of frying in the pan, canola, corn and olive oil would be OK."© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2007 other stories Ads by Google #footer_news {display:none;} #footer_news .foo...

But the newest claims on the latest foods are worthy of our attention, say dietitians and food scientists, and it's because today's food is so clean.Bacteria - both good and bad - have been processed out of our diet, they say.

Milk and ready-made foods are heated to bacteria-destroying temperatures, raw food is washed and rinsed and salads disinfected in chlorinated baths.

The result is that, without beneficial bacteria, we are less protected from disease, and, if we suffer from a digestive tract disorder, more likely to experience discomfort.

View Larger ImageProbiotic products have active bacterial cultures added.

Prebiotics have soluble fibre added, which encourages good bacteria to multiply.

Pictured here, milk from Lactantia with prebiotic fibre and Natrel's probiotic milk.Canadian PressEmail to a friendPrinter friendlyFont: ****"We used to get a lot of bacteria in the food supply, both good and bad," said dietitian Kim Arrey.

"Now everything is so sterile, there's a lot less bacteria in food.

And we eat less fermented food, like sauerkraut, than our grandparents did, so there's another loss of bacteria."So the food industry is marketing products - special milk, yogurt, cheese, bread - that put the good bacteria back into our systems.

The products are labelled either prebiotic or probiotic and are promoted as good for our health.The idea is to sell food that is a...

"What manufacturers have been doing is taking trans fats out of their products, but they're replacing them with fractionated oils."Fractionated (or modified) oils, which food makers use to give food the same texture and taste as trans fats, are found in everything from cookies to protein bars.

Healthy, unsaturated fats aren't used in packaged or baked goods because they are liquid at room temperature and don't provide the same taste or "mouth feel" as a solid fat.

While modified oils are better for you than trans fats, they're still not good for you."Modified or fractionated oils are typically saturated fats," Holwegner says.

"They're not great for you because saturated fats still elevate bad The reader who wrote in wondered if it was just another term for hydrogenated oil.

(Hydrogenation turns unsaturated fatty acids into saturated or trans fats.)Holwegner says it all depends on the oil and the process.

Modified does not necessarily mean hydrogenated."It's not really a scientific term, so it depends on what they're doing to it," she says.

"You could be talking about a modified olive oil." (Olive oil is known as a healthy fat.)Alejandro Marangoni, a professor and food scientist at the University of Guelph, says modification can be unhealthy when it involves introducing a saturated fat to the mix.

He explains how food makers can modify fats, tur...