The Nourisher - Editor’s Blog

October 6th 2005

Hail the good news! Finally some one is doing something about trans fats.

According to plans agreed this week by the board of health, under the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, all the city’s restaurants, cafes and street stalls will be forced to keep to a limit of half a gram of trans fats in any item served from their menus.

A small serve of Fries have 8 grams of trans fats. They are commonplace in doughnuts and bakery goods including bread and cookies, pastry, some margarine, crackers and deep fried foods. They have no nutritional value, the body simply can’t use them and they are associated with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and liver damage.

Trans fats are liquid polyunsaturated vegetable oils (and sometimes animal fats like lard) transformed into semi-solid fats using a process called partial hydrogenation. Hydrogenation is a violent chemical reaction using nickel, platinum or cobalt to twist double bonded carbon atoms and create straight carbon-hydrogen chains that look like saturated fats, but most definitely are not.

Food manufacturers use trans fats to give foods a more solid consistency, and to prolong shelf life. In other words, trans fats are a cheap version of traditional, more expensive animal fats like lard and butter designed to make production and handling of food easier, there is less wastage, therefore more profit.

Choice magazine in April this year published the results of a study of trans fat levels in more than 50 processed foods from supermarkets and takeaway food outlets in Australia. About a third of the food products contained levels of trans fat that were well above 2% trans fats, which is considered safe.

In the top ten were:

• Hungry Jack’s whopper and regular fries at a whopping 23% trans fats
• Pampas shortcrust pastry
• McDonald’s McNuggets, Big Macs and fries
• Sargents party sausage rolls
• Four ‘n Twenty traditional meat pie
• Sara Lee snack quiche lorraine
• and Nutella hazelnut spread.

Australia and New Zealand Food Standards (ANZFS) do not require manufacturers label their products for trans fats. They do, however require saturated fats to be labelled. Funny, humans have eaten saturated fats for millennia and trans fats are a modern product of a chemistry lab, why would they be a health menace and trans fats not?

Saturated fats enhance immune function while trans fats interfere with the immune system. Saturated fats enhance the body’s ability to utilize Omega 3 fatty acids while trans fats inhibit it. Trans fats are associated with Asthma while Saturated fats improve lung function. Trans fats contribute to weight gain, while some types of saturated fats (the medium-chain triglycerides) boost metabolism and help with weight loss. Trans fats are associated with cancer and decreased fertility while quality pasture fed animal fat contain nutrients that fight cancer and increase fertility. Which sounds healthier to you?

The best way to avoid trans fats is avoid processed foods all together. My kids like to have the occasional shop bought snack so I always bought them rice crackers thinking “they’re gluten free they’ll be ok.” Not so. I looked at the label the other day and found they contained vegetable oil. Which vegetable? Corn, soybean, cotton seed, canola? And is it partially hydrogenated? I don’t know. How could I know, manufacturers don’t have to label them as such.

There is one cracker I found without vegetable oil, Kavli Rye Crackers. They’re just rye, salt and water. Rye does have gluten so it’s out for our family but I wanted to inform those readers who can eat gluten of this one alternative to vegetable oil crackers. If you find any more, please leave a comment.

UPDATE: Food Standards Australia and New Zealand will meet with industry and health groups to discuss how to cut trans-fatty acids from our diets this month. Doctors say trans-fats increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

It’s about time. They are still tarring saturated fats with the same brush, however. Unknown to most, the original studies conducted on the effects of saturated fats in the diet included trans fats along with saturated fats. Fat from a grass fed animals are one of the most nourishing foods available and has been sought out by our ancestors since time immemorial.

About the Author...

Joanne Hay, Editor of Nourished Magazine, Chief Nourisher and Mother of three is very grateful to live in Byron Bay and be able to share all she has learned about Nourishment. She has trained as an Acupuncturist (unfinished), Kinesiologist (finished) and parent (never finished). She serves the Weston A Price Foundation as a chapter leader. She loves sauerkraut, kangaroo tail stew, home made ice cream, her husband Wes and her kids Isaiah, Brynn and Ronin (in no particular order…well maybe ice cream first).