It seems like every decade has a dietary buzzword and a subsequent product release that capitalizes on it. The early ’90s went “fat-free,” marked by one of the most successful product launches in the history of the food industry: SnackWells, Nabisco’s line of fat-free and low-fat snacks that gave consumers the peace of mind to eat an entire box of Devil’s Food Cookie Cakes in one sitting. The turn of the 21st century gave rise to the low carb frenzy, when ravenous dieters had no qualms about eating bacon, steak and more bacon, just as long as a piece of bread wasn’t on their plates. Now the dietary villain has a new name: trans fat. We may learn that the health concern is genuine with this fad, but the marketing behind it may not be.
“Where we find trans fats are usually in foods that contain hydrogenated fats,” explains Janet Rank Fischer, associate professor and director of the coordinated undergraduate program in dietetics at Mount Mary College. “When manufacturers hydrogenate a fat, they take a liquid oil and they force hydrogen back into the bonds in those fatty acid chains, taking it from a liquid oil to a solid. That’s what allows us to have margarine and other solid vegetable fats.”
To take you back to organic chemistry 101, courtesy of the No Trans Fat Organization Web site, “full hydrogenation results in a molecule containing the maximum amount of hydrogen” atoms possible, which turns an unsaturated fatty acid into a saturated one. As Wikipedia reminds us, partial hydrogenation results in the addition of hydrogen atoms at some, not all, of the empty positions around a molecule.
Partial hydrogenation is typically used in commercial food production in order to create a workable fat that is solid at room temperature, but melts upon baking or consumption. According to the Mayo Clinic, though it sounds counter-intuitive, fully hydrogenated oil doesn’t contain trans fat. However, if the food label contains “hydrogenated” vegetable oil, it’s usually referring to partial hydrogenation, which means the oil contains trans fat.
In 1911, Procter & Gamble began marketing the first hydrogenated vegetable shortening, Crisco. At the time, processed vegetable fats were considered a healthy alternative to the animal fatslike butterfat and lardthat were commonly used in baking because they’re unsaturated and mostly come from plant oils. They have a higher melting point and decreased refrigeration requirements, which extend their shelf life and make them particularly useful in the fast food, snack food, fried food and baked good industries. But alas, all good things come to an end. Scientists made a disturbing discovery in 1990: Trans fats seemingly increased LDL cholesterol while decreasing HDL cholesterol. When elevated, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol, is a major risk factor for heart disease, as reported by the Mayo Clinic. Over time, it can cause atherosclerosis, a dangerous accumulation of fatty depositscalled plaqueson the walls of our arteries. According to the Mayo Clinic, “If plaques tear or rupture, a blood clot may form, blocking the flow of blood or breaking free and plugging an artery downstream. If blood flow to part of your heart stops, you’ll have a heart attack. If blood flow to part of your brain stops, a stroke occurs.” High-density lipoprotein (HDL), or “good” cholesterol, picks up excess cholesterol and takes it back to our liver, helping to remove it from our body.
“At this point, the recommendation we make is to reduce the intake of trans fats by avoiding or reducing the intake of those products that contain them,” Fischer says. The American Heart Association recommends that “no more than 1% of your total daily calories be trans fat.” So if you consume 2,000 calories a day, that means 2 grams of trans fat or less. In the United States, trans fat that amounts to less than 0.5 grams per serving can be list ed as 0 grams of trans fat on the food label. That sounds like a small amount, but it can add up over the course of multiple servings of food, making it easy to exceed recommended limits without realizing it.
We cannot depend on food manufacturers to safe guard our health. The solution to the trans fat trouble lies in our ability to look beyond the labels and beyond the packaging to our own examinations of the facts.
