Eliminate trans fats from your diet. Trans fats have earned a bad reputation over the last year, and rightly so. Used to increase shelf life and flavor, trans fat is made when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil. In essence, the trans fats found in margarine, cookies, crackers, bread and other snack foods are harmful to your health. They raise harmful cholesterol levels and make arteries more rigid, which contribute to heart disease, and they raise insulin levels, potentially raising type 2 diabetes risk. For a long time, trans fat levels slipped by under the radar. However, the FDA has made it a law that manufacturers must now disclose trans fat levels in the nutritional values.
Although there is no recommended daily value assigned to trans fat currently, the general rule for saturated fat and cholesterol is that 5 percent or less is low and 20 percent or more is high. The tricky part about choosing trans fat-free food is that if it contains less than .5 gram of trans fat, according to USDA regulations, it can be labeled "trans fat-free." Here's when it pays to check the ingredients. If you see the words "hydrogenated," "shortening" or "partially hydrogenated" anywhere, then that means the product contains trans fats. The American Heart Association recommends a trans fat intake of less than 2.5 grams per day, so just a couple of servings can put you in the unhealthy range.