January 17, 2004

UNDER the US Food and Drug Administration rules, as the 2006 deadline for including information on trans fats (trans fatty acids) on the “nutrition facts” food label approaches, snack and processed food manufacturers will seek to reformulate their products to lower the content of this artery-clogging fat.

As every mother would agree, kids love to eat stuff like french fries and potato chips. They also crave for cakes and cookies, burgers and broasted chicken; and, of course, ice cream in all thirty-six flavours. Then there are all sorts of spreads — butter, margarine, mayonnaise, cheese and chocolate. And creamy toppings like ‘Thousand Islands’ to go on salads and stuff. If you spend most of your time preparing all that delicious stuff for the family, you know that most of it is laden with various kinds of fats. The same is the case with the mouthwatering traditional cuisine like quorma, pulao, biryani, kababs, paratha, puri, etc. That’s mainly because fats enhance the taste, aroma and texture of the food. As fats are digested slowly, they keep us satiated and give us a sense of fullness long after being eaten. But since we are ingesting increasingly more fats and working up less to burn them, they are becoming the cause of a number of diseases, from coronary heart disease to cancer.
 

Misguiding slogan

Talking about fats, many of us think that a particular brand of vegetable oil is good for our heart because ‘it does not contain any cholesterol’ as announced on the pack? If the answer is ‘yes’, no wonder our cholesterol level is increasing despite all efforts to control it.

Cholesterol, as you’ll find in any dictionary, is a form of ‘animal fat’; it just does not belong in vegetable oil. It is found only in animal foods. Abundant in organ meats and eggs yolks, cholesterol is also contained in meats, chicken and shell fish. Vegetable oils and shortenings are cholesterol-free. Actually, most of the cholesterol in our blood is manufactured in our body. As the amount of dietary cholesterol is decreased, the body compensates by increasing its production, and vice versa.
 

How good is ‘good’

Now a word about ‘good’ cholesterol and ‘bad’ cholesterol. Blood cholesterol reflects the amount of three major classes of lipoproteins: very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL); low-density lipoprotein (LDL), which contains most of the cholesterol found in the blood; and high-density lipoprotein (HDL).

LDL seems to be the culprit in coronary heart disease and is associated with cholesterol deposits on artery walls. In contrast, HDL is seen as desirable. The more HDL in the blood, the lower the risk of developing CHD. HDL carries cholesterol out of the blood and back to the liver for breakdown and excretion.

When the humans started cooking, they used only animal fat as the cooking medium. Later, however, they learned to cultivate and raised oil-producing seeds. It is not very long since we experimented with hydrogenation to turn liquid vegetable oil into semisolid. Most oils used in foods, shortenings and institutional cooking are partially hydrogenated. Hydrogenation raises saturated fatty acid content of the oil.

About a half century ago, researchers first noticed the different effects of saturated and polyunsaturated fats on blood cholesterol. In the early 1950s, scientists observed that diets rich in unsaturated vegetable fat resulted in lower levels of blood cholesterol than diets rich in the more saturated animal fats.
 

Why the cookie crumbles

As we are more taste-conscious than health-conscious, and we love to have a cookie that crumbles in our mouth, the food-makers as an extra measure of semi-solid fat to the dough so that the pie has that flaky texture, taste, and mouth-feel. The higher intake of saturated fat results in an increased level of cholesterol in the body. That, in turn, enhances the incidence of diseases of the heart and blood vessels as mentioned above.

From the debate on saturated versus unsaturated fat intake, and HDL versus LDL, the focus had, more recently, shifted to ‘trans fatty acids’. They are different from saturated fats, and as much or more harmful.

Health professionals say it’s these evil fats that are most harmful to the heart. Not only that, they are also considered to cause cancer. Trans fatty acids are found in any food with hydrogenated oils or partially hydrogenated oils.

If you wish to know how much of these harmful trans fatty acids are there in common foods, consider this: French fries have about 43 per cent; potato chips 40 per cent, most cookies and crackers 30-50 per cent, and doughnuts 35-40 per cent.

Researchers say while saturated fats are bad for heart because they increase level of bad cholesterol (LDL) in blood, trans fatty acids hit a double whammy since they also decrease good cholesterol (HDL).

No wonder the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now wants to put the trans fatty acid content to be mentioned on the food label. The term ‘trans fatty acids’ does not yet appear in dietary guidelines or on nutrient labels. Its use is restricted to health press.

Why trans fatty acids are bad for the heart? Because they disrupt cellular function, affecting enzymes necessary for conversion of both the omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids.

Clinical studies have shown that that consumption of trans fatty acids, or hydrogenated fat, result in higher blood cholesterol levels than consumption of naturally occurring vegetable oils. Studies also demonstrate that consumption of trans fats and partially hydrogenated fats result in higher concentrations of total and LDL blood cholesterol than naturally occurring oils. They indicate a direct relationship between consumption of hydrogenated oil and diseases of the heart and blood vessels. That’s the reason the The American Heart Association continues to recommend polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats over saturated fats.
 

What you can do

The best course for you, the health-conscious consumer, is to reduce the amount of bad fat — saturated fatty acids and trans fatty acids — in the diet. This you can do in three ways:

1. Avoid the fatty acids in red meat (beef, mutton, lamb) and dairy products (cheese and cheese spread, cream and butter in all forms). You can use fat-free cottage cheese, skim milk and low-fat yogurt, instead, for the essential supply of calcium.

2. Keep away from commercially fried foods, high-fat baked stuff (cakes, pies and cookies).

3. In home recipes, substitute natural unhydrogenated, unsaturated vegetable oils (preferably olive, canola, safflower, sunflower, corn and soyabean).

4. You can follow the advice of health professionals to lower the amount of trans fats in your diet. Besides, you can try poultry and fish as they contain certain essential ingredients that help your heart and in some way prevent cancer.

The writer is a freelance journalist