The anti-fat fat

We generally think of cooking oils as helping to make us gain, not lose, pounds.

So it came as some surprise to learn about "functional oil," a cooking fat being studied by researchers at McGill University in Montreal. So far, functional oil has been shown to raise the metabolism and, in some cases, enable people to lose weight. In fact, the fat-fighting oil is showing such promise that we may soon be seeing it on supermarket shelves.

Functional oil is made up of plant extracts and a combination of tropical, olive, canola and flaxseed oils. The mixture creates what's known as medium-chain triglycerides (MCT), a type of fatty acids that are rapidly burned and not stored as body fat. What's more, despite being rich in tropical oils, which are known to be artery cloggers, studies on functional oil published in Metabolism and the Journal of Nutrition found that it nonetheless reduced the risk of heart disease in both women and men. Will functional oil prove to be the nutrition breakthrough we've all been hoping for--or another Olestra disaster? Stay tuned.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group