The good oil on bad fats

I said, 'get me a pic to do with "Trans Fat", not "Fat Trans"'
Photo by FredAr­mitage

I now think that peo­ple who are eas­ily con­fused (like myself) are less likely to eat health­ily given the amount of infor­ma­tion now avail­able to us about sat­u­rated, unsat­u­rated, monoun­sat­u­rated, polyun­sat­u­rated, hydro­genated, par­tially hydro­genated fats and four-room HDB flats.

Naomi and I try spo­rad­i­cally to eat health­ily, and because we are such ingterneck-savvy peo­ple, we’ve taken to read­ing up about what we’re eat­ing in the hope of know­ing what to eat and what we shouldn’t. This is what we know so far:

Don’t eat so much fatty food, but some fats are good;

Diary prod­ucts con­tain unsat­u­rated fats, so we shouldn’t eat so much, but we need the calcium;

Fish con­tain good fats, but also appar­ently contain mercury, which, if you don't intend being a human thermometer, isn't all that good for you. (Next time you think you're running a temperature, stuff a mackerel in your mouth, and it'll tell you if you need a panadol and a cold bath).

The FDA says, "Sci­en­tific evi­dence shows that con­sump­tion of sat­u­rated fat, trans fat, and dietary cho­les­terol raises low-density lipopro­tein (LDL), or “bad cho­les­terol,” lev­els, which increases the risk of coro­nary heart dis­ease (CHD). Accord­ing to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Insti­tute of the National Insti­tutes of Health, more than 12.5 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have CHD, and more than 500,000 die each year. That makes CHD one of the lead­ing causes of death in the United States.”;

and that, “Trans fat, like sat­u­rated fat and dietary cho­les­terol, raises the LDL cho­les­terol that increases your risk for CHD. Amer­i­cans con­sume on aver­age 4 to 5 times as much sat­u­rated fat as trans fat in their diets. Although sat­u­rated fat is the main dietary cul­prit that raises LDL, trans fat and dietary cho­les­terol also con­tribute significantly.”

Har­vard (mean­ing it’s gotta be good and author­i­ta­tive) nutri­tion­ists say that, “By our most con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate, replace­ment of par­tially hydro­genated fat in the U.S. diet with nat­ural unhy­dro­genated veg­etable oils would pre­vent approx­i­mately 30,000 pre­ma­ture coro­nary deaths per year, and epi­demi­o­logic evi­dence sug­gests this num­ber is closer to 100,000 pre­ma­ture deaths annually.”

In Sin­ga­pore, the HPB says, "Yes. Trans fat raises LDL-cholesterol ("bad" cholesterol) and reduces HDL-cholesterol ("good" cholesterol) in the body. As a result, trans fat increases the risk of developing heart disease. There is no conclusive evidence to date for the effect of trans fat on other health risks such as diabetes or cancer. Currently there is also no evidence to show that consumption of trans fat found naturally in food will increase the risk of heart disease, so there is no reason to avoid beef, lamb, mutton or dairy products because they contain trans fat. ".

I don't know, but our local health board advisory seems to sound a bit... what's the word for it? Contradictorated? Polycontradictorated? Monocontradictorated... or at least partially contradictorated?

So, what can you do to figure out what's good to eat and what isn't?

The FDA made it compulsory from 2006 for manufacturers to state trans fat levels on food labels, so that you can figure out, say, whether to eat a slab of butter or a spoonful of margarine:

1 tablespoon of butter contains zero trans fat;

1 tablespoon of margarine contains 3 grams of trans fat;

But the same amount of butter contains 30 milligrams of cholesterol while margarine doesn't. Arrgh! so which do I put on my toast before it gets cold?

OK, so you may be able to work out some sort of bal­ance as to how much is con­sid­ered “in mod­er­a­tion” for either. But here’s the rub:

U.S. labelling rules state that: "if the serving contains less than 0.5 gram [of trans fat], the content, when declared, shall be expressed as zero."

To that, the good folk at bantransfat.com say: "Suppose a product contains 0.4 grams per serving and you eat four servings (which is not uncommon). You have just consumed 1.6 grams of trans fat, despite the fact that the package claims that the product contains zero grams of trans fat per serving."

Nabeh, kenah bluff. Which is serious stuff considering the WHO recommends that total daily intake of trans fat should be below 2g.

Bantransfat.com also tells us that "Fully hydrogenated oils do not contain trans fat. However, if the word "hydrogenated" is used without the word "partially," that product may contain partially hydrogenated oil. Not all labeling is accurate and the word "partially" may have been wrongfully omitted on some products."

So, can kenah bluff again in instances where it's not compulsory to list trans fat content (like here). Sure we’ve got pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial at hawker cen­tres and food stalls telling us that they don’t use lard in their cook­ing and use ‘veg­etable oil’ instead. But you should know when they say “veg­etable oil”, it really is usu­ally palm oil or peanut oil if they don’t say oth­er­wise, which is usu­ally par­tially hydro­genated, which means it con­tains trans fat.

Our friendly local health board says they’ve been “work­ing with ingre­di­ent sup­pli­ers to develop reduced trans fat short­en­ings used in baked prod­ucts. To date, at least one major local bis­cuit man­u­fac­turer has switched to using trans fat free short­en­ing, and sev­eral other pas­try retail­ers will also be switch­ing over to this short­en­ing soon.”

In the mean­time, ask your­selves, if your bread talks, and your Chang Kee is Old, is it because they contain partially hydrogenated oils?

It is a serious matter, especially is you look at the numbers of estimated premature deaths in the US, but no worry, because "This year, HPB will focus on fat as part of its nutrition education efforts. We have recently conducted a public forum on fats - look out for more events coming your way!"

Yay, events!

Technorati Tags: trans fat, health, HPB, Sin­ga­pore