Work is finished, and you’re tired and hungry. Maybe you’re rushing home or to daycare pickup.

You know you should be cooking dinner from scratch for the healthiest choice but that isn’t going to happen for a variety of reasons. You just need something quick and easy.

Then, you remember those headlines about trans fats in some packaged convenience foods and you start to worry.

If this feels familiar, here’s what you need to know.

Typically, we talk about two major groups of dietary fats – unsaturated and saturated.

Unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature. Saturated fats are solid at room temperature. It’s the saturated fats that are associated with health concerns as they can raise LDL (aka “bad”) cholesterol and increase inflammation.

Trans fats are technically unsaturated fats. But a slight difference in their molecular arrangement means they act more like saturated fats – in foods and the body.

Small amounts of trans fats occur naturally in some animal foods, such as red meat and dairy. They can also be created when oils are heated to very high temperatures, such as with commercial deep-frying.

But most trans fats in our diets are “industrial” trans fats. These are made when unsaturated fats are deliberately turned into trans fats by a process called hydrogenation. This makes........

© The Conversation