SubscribeThink You Are Avoiding Trans Fats? Think Again
No one can debate that trans fats should be eliminated from the diet. Research has found that trans fats have been linked to multiple health issues including elevated coronary heart disease risk and lowering HDL levels, higher abdominal fat levels and even infertility.
In 2006, in response to the health consequences of consuming trans fats, the United States FDA required that all food manufacturers would have to list the trans fat content of their foods. This was a great start, but many people are unaware that there is one major loophole with this new regulation.
A food can be labeled as having zero trans fats or "Trans fat Free"- even if it contains trans fats. (The FDA states that if a serving of a food has 0.5 gram (g) or less per serving of trans fats, then it can be labeled Trans Fat Free.)
So what is the big deal? Less than a half a gram of trans fat is a pretty small amount, Right?
Daily Limits
Well, according the latest American Heart Association guidelines for maintaining heart health, we should only be eating 1% of our total calories from trans fats. This equals approximately 2-2.5 grams of trans fats per day.
To give you an idea of how easy it would be to overeat trans fats, I recently went to a grocery store and checked out 10 commonly eaten snack foods that have been around since I was a kid.
- Ritz Crackers- 1 serving size = 5 crackers
- Cheez-Its Crackers- 1 serving size = 27 crackers
- Kraft Cheese Nips - 1 serving size = 1 ounce
- Skippy Peanut Butter- 1 serving size = 2 Tbsp
- Jif Creamy Peanut Butter- 1 serving size = 2 Tbsp
- Fig Newtons- 1 serving size = 2 cookies
- Nabisco Chips Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookies - 1 serving size = 1 cookie
- Crunch'n Munch Popcorn - 1 serving = 2/3 cup
- General Mills Chex Mix - 1 serving = 2/3 cup
- Frito Lay Cheetos Cheese Snacks - 1 serving = 1 ounce
As you can see, it would be pretty easy to eat "greater" than a serving size for many of these foods. What is most troubling about this list is that many of these foods are routinely consumed by children, thus putting kids at a higher health risk from a very young age.
Check the Label
Next time you go shopping for yourself or your children, make sure to not only read the nutrition label, but also the ingredients list.
Look for the words "partially-hydrogenated", "shortening" or even "hydrogenated" - which can all mean that the food still contains trans fats. (Even if the label says zero trans fats)
Listed in the ingredients, but not on the label.
(For great information and everything you would ever want to know about trans fats, visit www.bantransfats.com)
What kind of a unit is "a serving"? How can one can of coke be two and a half servings? Is your serving the same size as mine?
Why not just do as the Europeans: say how much (even when it is 0.005g) of something is contained in 100 grams of the finished product. That way it is easy to compare different products, and no one will be fooled into believing that one candy bar equals one serving.
What a pity that the industry probably won't accept an easier labelling.
(And with that final word, you will be able to deduce that I am not American at all...)
ReplyI notice that your list includes all highly processed foods. What about the option of removing the chips, crackers, etc. from your diet and eating more natural foods. Fruit and nuts (though it can have just as many - or even more - calories) is probably going to be a healthier alternative. Healthy, processed snack foods? Crazy!
ReplyAll this means is that I have another reason to eat whole foods. What really amazes me is that in this day and age, some people do not find it necessary to read the entire nutrition label, not just how many calories or fat grams something has. See the word hydrogenated in the ingredients, and that's a pretty good indication that something should be avoided, no matter how few calories it has.
And as for the idea of indicating how many calories are in a hundred grams of something, why not do both? Being in Europe right now, but living permanently in the United States, it's been a bit frustrating on occasion to know how many grams are in a package, the nutrition information of a hundred grams, but not know, say, how many dried figs are a hundred grams. For example, list the nutrition information for a hundred grams of dried figs, then give a recommended serving amount or--perhaps better--give the average weight of one dried fig. So that you can pretty much figure out the nutrition of a handful rather than hoping you didn't pull two hundred grams.
ReplyI agree with Pelikan about the European system, and I'm an American. I lived in Europe for a few weeks this summer and did a lot of my own cooking, and I found it MUCH easier to compare nutrition labels there. I hadn't known about their labeling system previously, but I LOVED it--and now that I'm back in the U.S., I miss it.
ReplySteer clear of pre-packed snacks, cook your own food, and you're golden. I mean, really, the stuff on the list above is pretty nasty.
ReplyI live in Australia, and it is legislated that food packaging here has to have both the 'per serving' details and the 'per 100g' details. I didn't realize other places didn't follow this format as well. You would think that governments would be making laws to empower consumers to make healthier, more informed choices.
ReplyI would be frustrated if food was labeled by weight. Don't you have to weigh everything then? But I think there are a lot of thing wrong with the American labeling system, like that they have odd rules for when you can say something is "calorie free" or "zero calories" or "low calorie" on a can of diet soda, and that Splenda packets and other sweetener's get to claim they contain zero calories when they really have four and all those crazy thing. It doesn't make a huge difference but it bugs me because I can't remember all those rules. I don't care about how a food sometimes contains more than one serving though, because they DO have to say "servings per container" and its right up top.
ReplyIn Portugal labels have to state calories, lipids, etc by 100 gr (or ml if liquid) and I think it is a far better rule than “by serving”. What exactly is a serving? It presumes that people look at the same quantity of food and think it is “a right amount”… and we know how far from the true this is…
I’ve started calculating everything: if a 100gr chocolate bar has 400 calories and 18 squares, then each square will have around 23 cal. So, a chocolate square won’t damage my diet that much… and will avoid a later compulsion. But we also have to pay attention to labels, for instance, a low fat yogurt has 35 cal for 100ml, but a normal bottle has at least 160 ml. So, 35x1.6= 56 cal. Boring, but easy, isn’t it? Yet, most people don’t read the entire label.
(Katie: buy a kitchen scale. I did it)
Anyway, I left crackers and other “diet” stuff, I’ll go for good old dark bread. In 3 months my cholesterol dropped from 267 to 198, with no drugs. Still overweight but a lot healthier!
ReplyI have one, but I didn't bring it to Europe with me, and since I go back to the U.S. in about five days, there's really no point. I can see the point about people perhaps not knowing a real serving, especially in places like the U.S. where too much of everything is served all the time pretty much, but sometimes knowing the amount in an approximate serving would be nice. Maybe the U.S. should start using the Australian system of both. It certainly couldn't do any harm.
And yes, it is appalling how few people will read an entire label. It drives my family members nuts, but when you've reached the point that you must read the labels on five different brands of something as basic as tomato paste or vegetable broth to find one lacking high fructose corn syrup, it's necessary.
ReplyHow scary... a 0 does not equal 0 fats/transfats/calories in the product (there goes all those years in math class!). Why doesn't someone change the guidelines and write it plain and simple. In London, all the foods i bought had a 'total calories' so that you'd know how much an entire bag of food was worth in calories, fat, etc... plus how many calories were per serving.
ReplyI have anoher rule: if it lasts forever, it can't be that good!
ReplyPeople find normal to buy food that will be ok to eat in a year or something like that. Maybe it’s because I’m a lucky bastard whose dad spends his time growing potatoes, onions, beans, parsley, oranges and lots of great fruits and vegetables, but I can’t help being suspicious a juice that lasts 12 months. I get fat because I do love to eat, but I’m pretty sure that if I had to move and be enable to get dad’s food, I would get thinner. I have friends that use dried (dry?) garlic, for instance. It appals me! I could understand if the fresh ones were expensive, but they aren’t. oh, well, maybe I’m just a fool country girl!
For serving on a chocolate bar it would say "eight squares" (for say a cadbury bar) or "1 bar" for a normal size candy bar or (for king size snickers) 2/3 bar. Its not like someone's going to eat 2/3 of the bar, so that's pretty annoying, but at the same time its really easy math if you're the kind of person who bothers to actually read the nutrition info. For stuff like chips they say "11 chips" or "9 crackers". I don't see how the American system is any harder to figure out as far as serving sizes go.
ReplyIf you buy whole foods and not processed, packaged stuff you usually don't have to worry about trans fats (unless you go to a restaurant!). I used to eat all those things and I was really unhealthy. Nuts are a good snack, as someone said, as is a slice of cheese or some veggies.
ReplyOne problem with serving sizes is that it is so difficult to compare products. If one choclate bar (weighing 115 g) has a serving size of 1/2 a bar and another (weighing 93 g) has a sering size of 2/3, which one would you chose? One answer is: the apple.
Otherwise I say: You go, Aussies!
ReplyI'm from the US and I too find our nutrition labeling to be inadequate and often times deceptive. One trick it seem companies use to make their food sound healthy is to pick a really small serving size - like Fig Newtons serving size of TWO cookies. This is very deceptive and they know people are not eating only 2 Fig Newtons. It appears that the serving size is purely arbitrary.
I think a god solution would be to have the nutrition information contains the per serving information as well as the information for the entire container. Pelikan above mentioned the serving size of a chocolate bar being '2/3rds' of a bar. Here, the most honest approach would be to have the nutrition information for the whole bar or only sell it in a single serving.
Then again, that's just my opinion.
ReplyYet another reason why I eat mostly unprocessed foods. I used to eat a lot of Fat Free Cool Whip...WAY more than a "serving" at a time. Probably more like, 6 servings or so. I found out that it contains trans fats, but since there's only 0.5 gm per serving, they can get away with labeling it "trans-fat free". I can see how it would be really easy to get confused though...if something says "0g" trans fat yet has partially hydrogenated soybean oil in the ingredient list, it's a little fishy. You're best off just not buying chips, crackers, etc. because the food companies know just about every loophole there is and you better believe they use them to their advantage every time.
ReplyAvoiding transfats if you eat processed foods is definitely HARD! I always read the label. Transfats scare me.
ReplyUnfortunately (at least for the food companies), some people would choose not to purchase that product because they are getting less. Even if they decreased the price a certain amount, I wouldn't be too surprised if a portion of the population concluded they weren't getting their money's worth and then ceased to buy whatever had been altered. Though for certain things, that wouldn't be a bad idea.
ReplyI never complained about American labels until last summer when I went to France. It was so much easier to understand exactly what you were eating, and at that time I didn't even know French! It lists the information for a serving, and beside it is the information for the entire package of food.
ReplyWhen a 16 year old can understand the nutrition labels in a foreign language better than American ones, you know there's a problem.
I don't really trust those labels. I think that have eliminated the ingredient on the label, but not in how it's made.
ReplyWhile I'm sure it was more than just a bit tempting to some companies, I have a feeling it would be less money for them to simply reformulate the product than to risk being sued by someone. And we all know the food industry is in it for the money.
ReplyHi Josie,
I know lots of people that can down 2/3 of a bar. Break out the Ritter Sport Chocolate Butter cookie, I can roll in it like a dog, then scarf down several bars. Same for the Nutter Butters! A whole package is easy...but maybe that's my problem.
ReplyHeres another scary thing about trans fat, it can be in your food even if the label doesn't say "partially hydrogenated fat". Another way to find out if your food has trans fat is to add up all the fats (mono-unsaturated, poly-unsaturated, and saturated fat) if this comes out to be less than the total number of fats listed, then the remaining number of fat is trans fat.
ReplyTrans fats are very easy not to notice in many commonly eaten foods. While I think things were really poor a couple years ago, there is starting to be some awareness of these fats and there has been more pressure on food companies to reduce or eliminate them from certain foods.
Reply