My old friend Jeff Quick remembered how I used to evangelize the health risks of consuming hydrogenated oils [as reiterated here], and told me he now stayed well clear of it. Well, it's been over a decade since I began that crusade. In the last few years my voice and many others have had a positive effect--I'm not the crazy lone doomsayer any longer. Now, for instance, you'll regularly see packaging claiming the food inside contains "0 Trans Fat."
Thus Jeff's [and Charles's] question: "I see a lot of labels nowadays crowing about 0 grams of transfat, but they still have hydrogenated oils in their ingredients list. What is your opinion on this turn of events?"
I told him my guess was food manufacturers could legally get away with claiming 0 trans fat if the amount contained was under a certain threshold. Well, by pure happenstance, it looks as if I didn't lead him wrong.
According to David L. Katz, M.D, a professor at Yale author of Flavor Point Diet:
"[Under FDA rules, food manufacturers are] required to post just how much of the artery clogger (trans fatty acid) is in the food--unless there's less than .5 grams per serving, in which case they can say 'zero trans fat.' The problem is 'one serving' can be misleadingly small--seven or eight 'free' cookies could sneak in 3 or more grams of trans fat."
There it is--if you see hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil in the ingredient list, stay clear.
6 comments:
Bruce,
I'm also a trans-fat Nazi and am diligent about keeping it out of our pantry.
Just one clarification for you, though. If the ingredient list specifically contains "fully hydrogenated oils" (as opposed to just "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated"), then they do not contain any trans fat.
It's still fat, of course, so you still want to be mindful of how much you're ingesting, but it's not trans fat.
John,
Could you give me a little more info on why fully hydrogenated oils do not contain trans fat? As I understand it, whether a given string of carbon contains only some attached hydrogen atoms through artificial means (partially hydrogenated0, or whether the carbon string is fully capped by hydrogen on every carbon, it is the method of attaching the hydrogen itself that creates the trans-bond between the carbon and hydrogen (as opposed to more naturally occurring cis-bond). It may well be that I don't understand what fully hydrogenated means... perhaps it is not an artificial process?
Thanks!
Snippet:
"When oils are only partially hydrogenated, the molecules of the partially hydrogenated oils form trans configurations, which means the oil molecules have kind of an odd shape for fat molecules. Your body doesn't like this trans configuration, and in fact, trans fats due to partial hydrogenation are as bad, or worse, for your arteries as saturated fats.
Fully hydrogenated shortenings don't have this trans configuration, but of course they are too solid to use for cooking. This problem can be solved by blending the fully hydrogenated solid with unsaturated oils to make them softer so that they can be used like regular margarine or shortening."
Source
Thanks for the source, John!
The final line in that piece makes me slightly nervous about the conclusion--I'd recommend staying away from Crisco regardless :-)
I still stay away from them, and now I'm dragging my wife down the healthy-esque road with me! And she has me avoiding corn syrup.
Together, we might make it out of the next couple of decades without our hearts exploding.
Sounds great Jeff!
Yeah, it's gotten to the point where my breakfast consists of raw fruit (breakfast) and vegetables (lunch). I'm not religious about it or anything, but trying.
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