News - Nutrition
Trans fat nutrition facts and labels.
By Dan Lynch
On Friday December 4th, I watched a presentation on trans fats by a University of Vermont graduate student. It put some more light on a few things which I assumed, but now know to be true. Well, I'm sure you've noticed all the bad press about trans fats the past few years and that this has lead to some changes in the food industry. The most drastic change so far occured in Denmark who have literally banned use of all trans fats. More conservative change occurred here in the U.S. with implementation of tans fats labeling requirements. Now when you look at the 'nutrition facts' section on the back of, say, a box of muffins or the wrapping on a loaf of bread there is new a 'trans fat' line item. The nutrition facts used to just say total fat then saturated fat, followed by the other line items such as cholesterol, sodium, etc. Let's say you want to avoid trans fats, now it's easier, right? Just look at the nutrition facts for 'Trans Fat 0g'? Unfortunately it's not that simple. It turns out the the Food and Drug Administration allow the nutrition facts on foods to say 'Trans Fat 0g' and even advertisng claims to say things like 'trans fat free' as long as the food contains no more than .5g grams of trans fat per serving. The bit about per-serving further complicates matters.
Most food packages contain multiple servings. So if each serving contained .4 grams of trans fats, and there are 10 servings in the container, well that's 4 grams of trans fats. A tablespoon holds about 5 grams, so this would be almost like taking a tablespoon of crisco and just gulping it down. Not exactly trans fat free. If you're trying to avoid trans fats the only real way to be sure is by checking the ingredients. Any thing hydrogenated or patrially-hydrogenated indicates that trans fats are in the food, even if there are claims on the lable saying otherwise and if the nutrition facts label says 'Trans Fat 0g'. I guess this is all just another example of how complicated it is to be an accurately informed consumer!
