California bans trans fats: A scambuster follow-up
Published Jul 31, 2008
On Friday July 25, 2008, California became the first U.S. state to ban trans fats (from restaurants beginning in 2010 and from baked goods in 2011). Similar bills are pending in more than 12 other states and are already on the books in several cities including Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. But while banning trans fats is a good idea, it is only a partial fix as it is likely that they will be replaced by other hidden fats, which, while they may be less bad than trans fats, are nonetheless bad. In order to help you understand this complex but important issue, I am reprinting my April 3, 2008 piece on this subject:
Most people know that foods containing trans fats are bad, which is good. But not everyone realizes that foods containing no trans fats are not necessarily good, which is bad. You can hardly walk through the supermarket without being bombarded with product messages announcing “No Trans Fats,” as if that fact automatically rendered them healthful. In fact, a product could contain no trans fats and actually be 100 percent pure fat! That’s because there are two main types of fats: namely, saturated and unsaturated fats. And while avoiding trans fats is a good idea, equally, if not more important, is monitoring and limiting saturated fat intake because saturated fat (along with trans fat and cholesterol) raise the bad LDL form of cholesterol and lower the good HDL form.
The way this works is that typically we think of saturated fats as being “bad,” and unsaturated fats as being “good,” but just to make things complicated, trans fats are unsaturated fats that are “bad.” This made them doubly bad because, before the food labels changed, they were “hidden” in with the “good” unsaturated fats and you had no way to know they were even there. So the food labels were changed to require trans fats to be specifically identified. But since everyone knows that trans fats are bad, no marketer wants to have a product that clearly says, “I’ve got trans fats.”
If you were that marketer, what would you do? Obviously, you’d eliminate the trans fats and advertise that fact prominently. But since fat tastes good and certain fat free products are tasteless, you might also up the saturated fat content of your product to compensate for the loss of trans fats. Of course, you wouldn’t advertise that fact at all. I call that a scam. Fortunately, you the consumer can see through this ruse, if you pay attention. That’s because the food label still has to disclose total fat, saturated fat, unsaturated fat and trans fat. You just have to read the label. And while you should always look at the food label for fat content (along with calories, cholesterol and sodium [salt]), this is especially true if the product is promoted as being trans fat-free.
This is what you should do. As soon as you see a product that you’re interested in that says its trans fat-free, immediately say to yourself “That’s interesting, but I wonder if this is a scam? I wonder if it’s trans fat-free, but loaded with saturated fat?” Then you look at the label and see how many grams of saturated fat there are per serving and what percent of the daily value you’re getting from every serving. While you’re at it you should also look at the serving size and try to estimate whether this is realistic for you (I find that serving sizes are often much smaller than the amount people really eat at one time). For example, if one serving is 10 percent of the Daily Value for saturated fat but the serving size is 12 chips and you’ve never eaten fewer than 25 at a time, then you would be getting at least 20 percent of the daily value for your serving size.
Remember too that you won’t be eating the product in a vacuum, meaning that it is just one part of your daily diet. You might also be eating a variety of other saturated fat-containing foods like baked goods, fried foods, snack foods, dairy products, meat, etc. The key is awareness coupled with moderation. You need to be aware of what you’re eating and what it contains (by looking at the label) and, you need to limit the total amount of saturated fat (and cholesterol, which comes from animal products) you’re consuming each day. It’s difficult to give exact numbers because everyone eats a wide variety of different foods and for one person, eating a handful of chips high in saturated fat might be the only high fat food they eat that day, while for another, that same handful of chips might be just one part of a diet that consists nearly entirely of high fat food.
Now, I’m not suggesting that you slavishly examine every food you buy and assiduously count up the grams of fat you eat or exactly calculate what percent of calories you’re getting from bad fat. That would be onerous and you’d never do it. What I am suggesting is that you recognize that trans fat free doesn’t mean fat-free (and could mean quite the opposite) and that you be mindful of the amount of saturated fat that’s in the products you buy and consume (trying to keep it as low as possible). Here are some dietary guidelines from the