Healthy Menu Options:
Making Sense of Trans Fat
It used to be easier. Offering lighter, healthier options to your customers meant cutting back on fat and calories. Then, along came a whole new range of dietary concerns, from carbs to cholesterol, and now, trans fats. And with them has come a glut of information and misinformation. Here’s the skinny.
What is Trans Fat?
Trans fat is created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil. This process, called “hydrogenation” turns liquid oil into solid fat, like shortening and margarine. These solid fats have long been used in a wide variety of processed foods, because they have long shelf lives at room temperature and perform well in food manufacturing.
You’ll find them in many crackers, snack foods, candies, cookies, baked goods and foods made with—or fried in—partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.
Health Concerns
But for all their convenience and widespread use, trans fats—also known as trans fatty acids—pose serious dietary risks.
Research has shown that they raise low-density lipoprotein (LDL) also known as the “bad cholesterol,” and that a diet high in trans fats increases the risk of coronary disease.
In response to these concerns, the Food and Drug Administration issued a regulation in the summer of 2003 requiring manufacturers to list trans fat grams on the Nutrition Facts panel of their products. Along with this mandate, consumers are more aware of trans fats and the negative effects they have on ones health and are more aware that the foods that they eat while dining out may contain trans fats.
Many restaurant operators are looking for ways to cut back on trans fats in their restaurants and New York city has passed a ban to eliminate artificial trans fats from its restaurants by July 2008.