Chips 'can increase the risk of infertility' !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 21/01/2007

Fats used to cook foods such as French fries and biscuits dramatically increase a woman's risk of becoming infertile, according to new research.

An American study of more than 18,000 women reveals that trans fats can reduce the chances of having a baby by up to 70 per cent.

Scientists believe that the fats — found mostly in processed vegetable oils — interfere with cells that play a vital role in ovulation.

The research adds to existing health concerns.

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Last year, experts at Oxford University called for trans fats to be clearly listed on food labels because they raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

But this is believed to be the first time they have been linked with infertility.

Trans fats are formed when liquid vegetable oils are partially hydrogenated to make them hard. They are used in cakes, biscuits and pastries. But constantly reheating liquid oil to fry chips also creates trans fats.

Experts at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston studied 18,555 healthy women in a long-term study throughout the 1990s.

All of the women were in relationships and trying to get pregnant.

Researchers recorded what they ate and then analysed pregnancy success rates.

The results, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed a woman's chances of falling pregnant dropped by 73 per cent for every two per cent increase in the amount of calories she got from trans fats.

Dr Jorge Chavarro, who led the study, said that equated to only four grammes of trans fats a day.

A portion of takeaway fried chicken could have as much as seven grammes of trans fats.

"It's not very hard to get four grammes of trans fatty acids every day," he said. "It's really a small amount of fats that we observed having a significant effect on infertility."