Dietary effects of trans fatty acids.

The dietary effects of the trans fatty acids in hydrogenated fats in health and disease deserves consideration for at least two reasons. One, trans fatty acids are becoming increasingly important as a source of calories in all industrialized countries, and two, their structural differences from the fatty acids in unhydrogenated fats offer a means of exploring uncharted areas in lipid metabolism. Such an exploration would have been impossible twenty years ago; some areas are still inaccessible because of a lack of methodology.