"trans fat" news and stories

After New York City officials announced a plan to ban trans fats from restaurants, there has been some debate among scientists as to whether the ban will have a beneficial effect on the population. Virtually all experts agree that trans fats are not good for you, but the question about how bad they are has not actually been answered. Trans fats seem to raise the bad levels of cholesterol and lowering the good, which can increase the risk of heart attack and other heart problems. The problem is that while they do increase the bad, the amount that the good is reduced by is not great, so some scientists don't think that the ban will "save lives," as some of the officials behind the ban suggest.

So, the answer seems to be that banning trans fat might be beneficial. And if they change isn't a radical one in terms of health - although it could be - it certainly won't be bad for people to replace trans fats with fats from other sources. Even saturated fat "is at least a natural constituent of our diets," and not a "chemical abomination," as trans fat is.

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When Nicole posted about Chicago's proposed city-wide ban on the use of trans fats in restaurants, she suggested that fast food restaurants would feel the strongest effects of the ban. Now the Chicago alderman that proposed the ban has limited it to only major restaurant chains, specifically those with at least $20 million in annual gross sales, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The ban was apparently revised out of concerns that smaller independent restaurants could not afford the switch to pricier non-hydrogenated oils. Some feel that the ban is a positive move, while others still feel that their aldermans' time would be better spent on things other than cooking oil and foie gras.

Even though there has been a lot of press about how trans-fats are bad for you, there are no official recommended limits as so how much you can eat. The FDA's guidelines are something along the lines of a warning that "the less consumed... the better" - but less than what? Is 2 grams that hazardous? 5 grams?

The American Heart Association just released guidelines proposing a specific limit for the amount of trans-fats that you should eat: less than 1% of the total calories consumed in a day. A single fat gram has 9 calories, so for a person on a 2000 calorie/day diet, this guide would suggest eating no more than 2 grams of trans fat per day. The recommendation was made after a panel of doctors and specialists reviewed more than 90 studies relating to the issue

Bearing this new standard in mind, it is important to note that the FDA says that a product with .5 or fewer grams of trans fats can still claim to have 0g per serving - so read the list of ingredients to find out if food is really trans-fat free. And extra half-gram per serving of trans-fat in a favorite treat can add up quickly.

 

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We're not stupid. Sometimes we pretend or choose to ignore the fat in foods from McDonald's and KFC, but we know those evil trans fats are in there.

However, what you might not have known is that the trans fat content in French fries and fried chicken from McDonald's and KFC is higher in the US than in their counterparts in other countries. Researchers studied the trans fat content of foods at locations around the world and were surpised by how much variation there was for restaurants that are supposed to be standard from location to location. There were even differences among restaurants in the same city.

The differences come from the type of frying oil that is being used - partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is high in trans fast (and is also cheaper). At a New York City McDonald's, a large fries-and-chicken-nuggets combo had 10.2 g of trans fat, Spain, Russia and the Czech Republic had a mere 3 g, and Denmark nuggets and fries came in the lowest at 0.33 g of trans fat.