THE ARTICLE
Avoiding fat in our diets has become a pastime for many of us. While it’s easy to spot overall fats in the foods we eat, differentiating trans fats from other fats still confuses many people. Trans fats are found in most commercially prepared fried and baked products, and it is used because it makes the food last through shipping and storage.
A survey of 1,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 65 was conducted to assess their “awareness, knowledge, and behaviors related to fats and oils and their perceived impact on heart disease.” In 2006, 84 percent of respondents had heard of trans fats, and in 2007, 92 percent had heard of them. Almost 75% of those who had heard of trans fats knew that they increase your risk of heart disease. However, only 21% could name 3 sources of trans fats.
Trans fat is the result of adding hydrogen to vegetable oil, which is called hydrogenation. Hydrogenation allows the oil to become solid at room temperature, which makes it last longer on the shelf. "Back in the '70s, when everyone started realising how bad saturated fat was, food manufacturers switched to using unsaturated fats, like vegetable oil," says Lisa Dorfman, R.D., a sports nutritionist and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. "But to make them more stable, more solid, and easier to cook with, they had to add hydrogen back into them."
What it also does is make the food more harmful to your body. The US Food and Drug Administration reports that eating trans fats raises LDLs (low density lipoproteins), which increase your risk of heart disease. "The replacement was worse than the original," says Meir J. Stampfer, M.D., Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Studies have shown that people who eat more trans fat have a higher risk for heart disease and diabetes." Since heart disease is the number 1 killer worldwide, foods and fats that increase your risk of heart disease are definitely to be avoided. In contrast, the fats found in canola oil, nuts, avocados, and olive oil are good and healthy fats, because they help you lower LDLs and raise HDL (the “good” cholesterol).
Although there are small amounts of trans fats in food naturally, food processing has made them much more prevalent. "It's very difficult to avoid them when eating any kind of packaged or processed foods," says Tara Geise, R.D., a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, and a nutritionist in private practice in Orlando, Florida.
"It's the worst form of fat, and we need to get it out of our diets," says Stampfer. And no, you can't cheat because you're training for a marathon and "running it off." "People sometimes think that if they exercise and are fit and lean, they can eat whatever they want," says Stampfer. "That's not true. You can still be vulnerable to heart disease." So go ahead and eliminate those partially hydrogenated oils from your life. Here are some specific strategies you can use to increase your knowledge about trans fats and reduce (or eliminate!) them from your diet.
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Read labels. Starting in January 2006, food makers have been required to list trans fats on their products. It can be found on the Nutrition Facts panel, right under the indications for saturated fat. Compare different foods and choose the ones with the lowest combined amount of trans fats and saturated fats, along with the lowest amount of cholesterol. The American Heart Association recommends consuming no more than 2 grams of trans fat per day. The tricky part is that if a product has a half gram of trans fats or less, they can round it down to zero on the nutrition label, and those little bits of trans fats quickly add up. Which leads us to the next strategy:
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Read the ingredients list. If you see “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” in the ingredients list, there are trans fats there. So even if a product has less than half a gram of trans fats, you’ll see it listed there.
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Know the products that are likely to contain trans fats. The primary sources of trans fats include cookies, cakes, pie, crackers, and bread. Others you might not realise are pancake and waffle mixes, microwave popcorn, hot cocoa and energy bars. There are trans fat free versions of many of your favourite products; however it’s still better for your body and the environment to eat whole, fresh, organic foods instead of processed foods of any kind. Processed foods tend to contain high quantities of fat, sugar, and salt, three things you definitely don’t need more of in your diet.
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