Trans fat has become the toxic waste of our heart-smart, weight-watching world.
Dr. Nate E. Lebowitz, a cardiologist at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center (N.J.), even goes so far as to compare artificial trans fat cooking and baking oils to arsenic.
"There literally is not much difference," said Lebowitz, associate chief of cardiology. Trans fat "is just a slower killer" than arsenic, he said.
He tells his patients to read ingredient labels and look out for trans fats, also called trans fatty acids, as well as partially hydrogenated oil. "This stuff is literally poison," he said. "If you see it, put it back on the shelf, run away and wash your hands."
The tide is turning in this fast-food nation, where the average American ingests 4.7 pounds of trans fats contained in Crisco, lard and other shortenings each year.
City, state and federal officials consider trans fat a national health menace, saying it causes heart disease and contributes to obesity. Last year, they served up a plateful of regulations with a heavy garnish of hype on trans fats:
- The FDA requires food companies to list trans fat content separately on nutrition labels of all packaged foods.
- In December, New York became the first U.S. city to ban restaurants from serving food containing trans fat and to require many eateries to publish the calorie content of their dishes.
- New Jersey may be next. In October, state Sen. Ellen Karcher introduced a bill that would prohibit trans fat cooking in restaurants.
National fast-food chains have gotten the message. KFC recently announced it would switch to non-trans fat soybean oil by spring. Chili's, Wendy's and Ruby Tuesday have already dropped trans fats.
Though some diners and restaurateurs have raised outcries of "keep your hands off our french fries," the public has acquiesced to the new rules.
But what are trans fats? Why are they bad, and what do they do to the human body? Most important, will your fried chicken taste the same without it?
"Trans fat is fat that just won't dissolve," Lebowitz said. "It's converted very rapidly into cholesterol and gloms onto your arteries."
Trans fat is created by adding hydrogen to vegetable oil hydrogenation to make the oil more solid and less likely to spoil. Trans fats make manufactured foods stay fresher longer. They are used to make many fried foods, such as doughnuts and french fries, and baked goods like crackers, cookies and cakes.
Bakeries prefer trans fat shortenings because they have a better consistency for baking pastries and cookies and it gives them a longer shelf life. Trans fats are popular in restaurants because the oil can be used again and again in the deep fryer, making these oils a bargain. Regular oil goes rancid quickly.
Ironically, many big fast-food companies became dependent on hydrogenated oil a decade and a half ago because they were pressured by health groups to do something about saturated fat. At the time, trans fats were considered a healthy alternative to animal fats and lard because they are unsaturated and made mainly from plant oils.
McDonald's emptied its fryers of beef tallow and filled them with what was then thought to be "heart-healthy" partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.
"They did so in all innocence, trying to do the right thing," said Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Everybody thought it was safe. We thought it was safe."
But it now appears that trans fats increase so-called "bad" low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and decrease "good" high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. Worse, trans fats also appear to increase triglycerides, another type of fat in the blood that may add to hardening of artery walls, which increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and coronary problems.
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