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Recipes and Dietary Guidelines
The Phantom fat…what you need to know about trans fat
by Monica Miller, RD, LD, CDE,
Samaritan Albany General Hospital
You may or may not have noticed that food manufacturers have started to list the trans fat content of foods on the Nutrition Facts labels. The FDA will require that food manufacturers list trans fat on all food product labels by January 2006. Scientific evidence is clear that trans fat is as harmful as saturated fat at increasing the risk of coronary heart disease by increasing blood levels of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. Trans fat is formed when liquid oils are made into solid fat by adding a hydrogen atom to the oil chemical structure, a process called hydrogenation. Hydrogenation of oils adds shelf life and flavor stability of foods containing these fats. Foods that have hydrogenated fat include foods fried in shortening or other hydrogenated oil, pastries, pies, cookies, cake and crackers. Unfortunately restaurants are not required to provide customers with information about how much trans fat is in their foods and some of the big chain restaurants are the biggest culprits for serving trans-fat containing foods. Some restaurants are starting to make the move to oils, which are trans fat free.
The American Dietary Guidelines recommend consuming as little trans fat as possible. Some ways to limit trans fat in your diet are:
- Choose liquid or tub margarine over hard stick forms. Fats that are solid at room temperature usually are high in trans fat or saturated fat (both harmful).
- Use naturally occurring oil, which has not been hydrogenated.
- Look at the ingredient list of foods and choose those that list oils that have not been hydrogenated.
- Read the Nutrition Facts of food labels and look for foods listing 0 grams of trans fat.
- Ask for nutrition information about the trans fat content of foods at restaurants and request foods that are trans fat free.
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