there's good fat and bad fat

There's good fat, there's bad fat and there's truly horrible, heinous, reprehensible fat -- the Voldemort of the fat world, a fat so hideous and evil that it's despised by nutritionists and cardiologists the world over.

Trans fat -- shudder! -- is beyond bad. It's so bad, in fact, that it earned the label "metabolic poison" from Harvard School of Public Health professor Walter Willett.

Not satisfied with merely increasing your bad cholesterol, trans fat (short for "trans fatty acids") manages to lower your good cholesterol, too. It occurs naturally in low levels in milk and beef, but most of the trans fat in the American diet comes from 45,000 food products, everything from cookies to fries to Twinkies.

-- Star Bulletin, 4/2/06