...Well, almost. The corporation has officially switched all of its cooking oils to trans-fat free in its U.S. and Canadian restaurants, but many of the premade products - like pies and cookies - still contain the artery-clogging ingredient.

You probably remember hearing about this - or even thinking it had already happened- because Mickie D's announced the plan awhile ago. In fact, while they were drumming up press, Wendy's, KFC and Taco Bell all made the switch to trans fat-free cooking oil.

So, thanks, McD's. Now Americans and Canadians have another way to rationalize our insane consumption of fried foods.

Interesting list over at ACalorieCounter.com: 10 Surprising Foods That Contain Trans Fat.

Now, he admits that a couple of foods on the list aren't that surprising (such as Ritz Crackers or cookies), but he explains that many foods that are advertised as "0 trans fats" actually contain some trans fats, the amount is just low enough to be able for them to say it's "0." And the amount goes up more if a person has more than the one serving size that labels have the amounts for (and we all know we all eat more than one serving).

I didn't think plain Saltines had trans fat, but there you go.

Donuts are not health food. Fried pieces of dough covered in sugar or chocolate and, sometimes, filled with jam, donuts are written off by millions everyday as an indulgence. But because they rely so heavily on frying, and as a direct result, on partially hydrogenated oils, donut makers have grown increasingly worried about their futures over the past few years, as trans fats have fallen far from the eye of public favor.

A large number of donut makers have turned to "all natural" recipes and are already using trans-fat free oils for frying. After first seeing the anti trans-fat movement spring up, many shop owners and chefs started to eliminate any and all trans fats from their recipes. Some of the donut makers that use no trans fats include the Doughnut Plant in New York, Mighty-O Donuts and Top Pot Doughnuts in Seattle. Dunkin Donuts is close and has been testing new recipes for two years. More are in the process of converting, helped along by their desire to keep consumers coming in every morning and trying to make their particular brad of deep fried indulgence seem a little less bad for you.

Nutritionist Bonnie Minsky carries around a prop with her when she has speaking engagements: a cupcake. You wouldn't think that a dietitian would want to have a treat like this around her, especially since it is the processed, packed-in-plastic type of snack cake, but she uses it to make a point about the dangers of trans fats. You see, the Hostess cupcake that she carries is 25 years old. The plastic packaging didn't hold up too well, nor did the frosting, but the cake itself appears to be relatively undamaged.

The cake was intended to be an experiment from the beginning. She purchased the cake in 1981 and "let it site for a few months" to see what would happen. She also purchased an apple at the same time. Of course, the apple began to decompose in fairly short order, but nothing happened to the cupcake. She attributed the lack of change to the presence of partially hydrogenated oil - a.k.a. trans fats - because "the [other] ingredients in the cupcake are all real."

Minsky thinks that the recent moves in Chicago and New York, as well as other cities and countries around the world, to ban trans fats are a good idea. And after seeing what they can do to a cupcake, even if there is no definitive answer about what they do to your body, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

A few months ago, Chicago Councilman Edward M. Burke proposed a city-wide ban on trans-fats, but it doesn't seem like there is a significant amount support for a total ban, because he has modified his proposal to force fast food places and other restaurants to post warnings about trans fats. The legislation is targeted at large companies and only applies to companies that have a gross annual income of $20 million or more, so no warnings would need to be posted at a small burger joint or at the local diner regardless of how much trans fat they use.

Thomas Tunney, another Councilman from a different Chicago district, pointed out that other cooking fats "have their own problems," implying that such a ban could prompt people in government to consider what other foods they might restrict in the name of health. Scientists do not even agree as to how bad trans fats actually are for you, so there is no baseline from which Burke and his supporters are operating from when they turn their attentions to "bad for you" foods.

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.

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.

 

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.