KC Hayes, Professor Emeritus of Biology, recently talked to Brandeis NOW about new guidelines on partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (trans fats) and statin drugs.
Brandeis NOW: You’ve been a long-time advocate for banning hydrogenated oils. How do you feel now that it is finally happening?
Hayes: It’s about time. We’ve known about the negative effects of transfat since the early 1990s — some would argue even sooner — so it’s really 20 years late.
Hayes continues to do research with his lab at Brandeis, seeking to understand the role of diet and nutritional supplements in diseases such as atherosclerosis and diabetes, often using the diabetes-prone nile rat as a model. A couple of their recent publications:
- Bolsinger J, Pronczuk A, Hayes K. Dietary carbohydrate dictates development of Type 2 diabetes in the Nile rat. J Nutr Biochem. 2013.
- Kunces LJ, Cusack LK, Kupchak BR, Volk BM, Freidenreich DJ, Aristizabal JC, Saenz C, Pei R, Guo Y, Fernandez ML, Bruno RS, Maresh CM, Kraemer WJ, Pronczuk A, Hayes KC, Volek JS. Triglyceride recrystallized phytosterols in fat-free milk improve lipoprotein profiles more than unmodified free phytosterols in hypercholesterolemic men and women. J Am Coll Nutr. 2013;32(4):234-42.
