Healthy living
oil is dense in saturated fat. Inter-esterified fats have unknown health impacts. It’s one that health researchers are just starting to keep an eye on,” Stevenson explains.
Time to force trans fats out? Thankfully, food manufacturers and retailers have done a lot to help reduce the levels of trans fats either contained in their foods or used as part of the cooking process. International regulators, like the US FDA, have regulated to help reduce their usage and educate the public on the dangers.
Echoing Stevenson, the American Heart Association (AHA) says that, before 1990, very little was known about how trans fats could harm people’s health. It adds that the FDA has since instituted labelling regulations for trans fats and consumption has decreased in the US in recent decades. “Read the nutrition facts panel on foods you buy at the store and, when eating out, ask what kind of oil foods are cooked in. Replace the trans fats in your diet with monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats,” the AHA advises.
Educating the public in healthier eating choices has become increasingly important areas of policy.
The idea that partially hydrogenated oils can resemble soap evokes an image reminiscent of the anti-smoking campaign on UK television screens in the early 2000s, which tried to portray the impact smoking has on the cardiovascular system and arteries. The promotion – which included fat dripping from the end of cigarettes people were smoking – was widely applauded by health groups.
“I hope that a trend of increasing consumer awareness will continue, which pressures governments to introduce mandatory limits on trans fat contents of foods.”
James Stevenson
According to Stevenson, partially hydrogenated, soap-like fats play different functional roles across different food products. For example, they can be used to prolong shelf life, act as deep-frying oils or as a fat in baked goods. “Finding a suitable trans- fat-free substitute will depend on the role that partially hydrogenated oil plays,” Stevenson says. There are, however, replacements in development, with palm oil and inter-esterified fats as two examples, but they come with their own issues.
“The cultivation of oil palm causes extensive loss of biodiversity-rich rainforest ecosystems and palm
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While this is widely known and understood within the food and beverage industry, raising that awareness among the general population has now become the challenge – one the WHO is attempting to take on.
“In 2013, Dr Shauna Downs of Rutgers University led a study of the scientific evidence on the impact of policy action to reduce trans fat consumption. They found that a range of different policy approaches reduces trans fats in foods but that bans are ‘likely to be the most effective, economical, and equitable approach’,” Stevenson says. “Simply put, it is hard for consumers to interrogate the content of foods, or different labelling schemes, in order to make healthy choices.”
While he accepts that promoting healthier fats and oils is a “laudable component” of the WHO’s REPLACE package, promoting regulatory actions that limit trans fats to very low levels consistent with lower cardiovascular disease risk is also critical.
“I hope that a trend of increasing consumer awareness will continue, which pressures governments to introduce mandatory limits on trans fat contents of foods,” he concludes. With regulators continuing to focus on the use of trans fats in products and their preparation, and the industry adopting positions that aims to cut them too, the next frontier has to be in the kitchens and dining tables of homes and businesses the world over. The question now is, can policy and reformulation do that or is more still needed? REPLACE might be just the beginning. ●
Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com
Nadya_Art/
Shutterstock.com
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