NYC Takes Trans Fat Down

Here’s the story…of a city named New York…that was working hard to eliminate trans fats (the type created when you partially hydrogenate oils) from restaurants. All of them were first asked to voluntarily remove them. That didn’t work (big surprise). So the NYC Board of Health “required” the removal of trans fat. By November 2008, according to estimates, restaurant use of artificial trans fats for frying, baking, or cooking or in spreads had decreased from 50% to less than 2%! And so far it appears that this replacement of trans fat taking place in NYC restaurants has resulted in foods with more healthful fatty acid profiles (which presumably will lead to a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease in particular but also improve insulin sensitivity and decrease inflammation in the body).

And that, my friends, is how it is done.

Experts estimate that a 2% increase in calorie intake from trans fat may increase the risk for a coronary event by up to 23%.

There are many ways to get food companies and restaurants to move in a healthful direction. They want to please the customer usually, so if the customers are asking for a certain change or reacting to a certain change with their pocket books, it’s one way to get their attention. This is what I suspect is partly what has happened in the supermarket with trans fat. As companies started labeling their products with the amount of trans fat (sometimes shocking amounts too), some customers took notice. That’s around the time that “trans fat free” banners started appearing on packages of certain products. But sometimes, when you want the change to be seemingly quick and painless, it’s possible to bypass the consumer and just make the change to the food at the source.

Baked goods are the largest dietary source of trans fat.

Partial hydrogenation was patented in 1903 and its use in manufacturing food products increased in the 1950s extending to margarine in the 1970s. It wasn’t until the 1990s that studies started to identify trans fat as a health catastrophe.

Trans are way worse than saturated fat.

Even at relatively low levels of food intake, trans fats raise LDL “bad” cholesterol while simultaneously lowering HDL “good” cholesterol – increasing the risk for coronary heart disease. But they also promote an inflammatory response in the body and have other adverse effects on the cells lining the blood vessels.

But as we move forward to phase out trans fats and the use of partially hydrogenated oil, we need to make sure that food suppliers aren’t replacing them with saturated fats – like the tropical oils (palm, palm kernel, coconut) or animal fats because that’s what’s available and affordable. There have to be enough alternative fats and oils available for food companies to use. Do we have the supply to meet the demand? For example, the supply of corn oil is perhaps limited in the current climate of biofuel development. We need to be diligent in our effort to eliminate trans fat, but we also need to be smart about it.

[Ann Intern Med 2009, 151: 129-134]
[Ann Intern Med 2009, 151: 137-138]

Healthy Cooking, Object