Trans Fats 101: What They Are (and Why You Should Steer Clear of Them)

Photo by Flickr user Ezra Wolfe

Earlier this month, the FDA announced it was banning artificial trans fats from food products. It set a 2018 deadline to remove all partially hydrogenated oils from food products.

Obviously, this has major implications for one staple of Philadelphian diets: Tastykakes. A 2013 study from the Harvard School of Public Health said that the Tasty Baking Company had made some of the biggest strides in removing trans fats from its products already.

So how’d they do it? We don’t know, because the company declined several requests for an interview. A quick scan through the convenience store, though, shows that trans fats are still present in Tastykakes: Donuts listed as an ingredient partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening, a trans fat. But it’s not all bad: A package of cupcakes listed hydrogenated cottonseed oil; fully hydrogenated oils do not contain trans fats.

This is silly, in a way: Hydrogenated cottonseed oil isn’t great for you either. And they’re Tastykakes! They’re going to be unhealthy. But it does make us ask, why are trans fats so dangerous, anyway? I got Dr. Daniel Edmundowicz, chief of cardiology at Temple University Hospital, to answer a few basic questions.

What makes trans fats so dangerous?
There are two things. Number one is that they can cause an elevation in blood cholesterol level, which we know is associated with a higher risk of coronary artery disease. And, number two, they can be pretty innocuous. By that I mean, people might not necessarily know that they’re consuming a fat that is unhealthy for them.

Do we know why trans fats raise blood cholesterol levels?
It’s a phenomenon where an increased intake of these kinds of fats, polyunsaturated fats, can raise blood cholesterol levels. Blood cholesterol levels are related to the accumulation of cholesterol of what we call plaque in the coronary arteries and the other arteries in the body. When those plaques become unstable, they can block the vessel and they can cause heart attacks and strokes.

Do you know when doctors and scientists first found out that trans fats were so unhealthful?
It’s been a long process. Trans fats do exist in nature, we see them a little bit in meat and dairy products. But really trans fats are a product of the food industry. What a trans fat is … it’s a manufactured fat in that you simply add hydrogen to fats. What it does is it increases the shelf life of food. It prevents things from becoming rancid quicker. The food industry has used it because they can extend the shelf life of things like pastries, cakes and cookies.

It’s been known that any kind of increase in a fat like this could cause a risk of heart disease by raising cholesterol and things like that. But the other thing is: If people are reading food labels, they don’t have to put that it has any trans fats if they keep it under half a gram. Even if people are into reading food labels and trying to track this, they might not even know that they’re getting a little bit of it. And a lot of different products that have a little bit of trans fats, that can add up pretty quickly.

Back up with me for a second here. What does cholesterol do in our bodies?
Cholesterol is used for a couple things. It’s kind of the building block for structures in our cells. You can almost kind of think of it as the brick and mortar of our cell structure. Cholesterol is also very important in the production of hormones in our body. So we do need cholesterol, it’s just that when it’s in excess — or when it’s being carried around by the wrong proteins, or the combination of those two things — that’s when we start to get disease by the high cholesterol levels.

So how can people avoid trans fats?
Well, it will soon certainly be easier with this FDA ruling. About a third of someone’s total calories should be made up of fat. There are some better fats out there, there is polyunsaturated fats, things like the olive oils. I think it really just gets back to the general nutrition recommendations. We try to limit how much fat in in our diet in general. Particularly saturated fat, we want to keep to less than 10 percent of our diet in general. So it kind of gets back to tracking these things. So, from a practical standpoint: Try to avoid the heavily fried foods, the cakes, the cookies, all these things have fat in them and are produced with some of these trans fats. It really is all about balanced eating.

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