Even though trans fats are bad for your heart, they don’t seem to make your body’s general inflammation much worse — so something else, like cholesterol, might be the main reason.

Eating a lot of trans fats for a few weeks slightly lowers one inflammation marker and raises another, but doesn’t change most others — so its effect on inflammation is small and mixed.

Eating foods with artificial trans fats raises the bad cholesterol and lowers the good cholesterol, making heart disease more likely.

Eating a lot of artificial trans fats for a few weeks makes your body produce more of a chemical that shows your fats are being damaged by stress, like rust forming on metal.

Artificial trans fats make your body produce more inflammation and cell damage, which can lead to heart disease and other chronic illnesses.

Artificial trans fats make the liver produce more fat, cause more cell damage from oxidation, and trigger inflammation, which can lead to serious liver scarring over time.