Have you ever shopped at Safeway or Shoppers Drug’s Mart and tried to get the best deal on chips? Well, I think most of you have. Does the label “Zero Trans Fat” look appealing to you?

Soon after the Food and Drug Administration of United States made a labeling mandate in 2003, the food industry had put a lot of efforts into reducing trans fat in their food products. One issues, however, has brought to some experts’ attention including incident of inconsistent inclusion of fats. But do people really know what trans fats mean? What is the source of trans fats and what is bad about them?

An unsaturated fat is a fat with one or more double bonds. Unsaturated fats with hydrogen atoms in trans configuration are rare in living nature but they can be found in a lot of processed foods like doughnuts, fries, cookies, chips and toppings.They are known to be linked with coronary heart diseases as they increase our LDL level and at the same time decrease our HDL level. On the other hand, those rare naturally occurring trans fats found in meat and dairy products have the opposite health effect. According to one review, they might even reduce the risk of having cardiovascular disease and cancer. Trans fats are not all that bad after all! However, people should still read carefully what is on the nutrition label when they do grocery shopping.

Wait a second! Then what went wrong with the nutrition label that made experts to call for a change? Dr. Spencer Proctor, a director in the department of the Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases Laboratory at the U of A, conducted the scientific review showing benefits that naturally occurring trans fats might bring.

“Right now, in Canada and the U.S., a substantial portion of natural trans fats content is included in the nutrition label trans fats calculation, which is misleading for the consumer. We need a reset in our approach to reflect what the new science is telling us.” says Proctor.

Some possible ways to improve the nutrition labeling is to not include the natural trans fat in the fat content or an even better way is to have a separate listings for industrial trans fat and natural trans fat.

Recently, people have showed their increased awareness of trans fat and yet their understanding toward the different sources of trans fat has not been integrated. Although buying the cheapest food products can be tempting, the zero trans fat products are usually more expensive as the process of making them is costly.

More on trans fats from Dr. Spencer Proctor

References:

Americans Are Becoming More Aware Of Trans Fats, But Not Its Sources

Expert Calls for Change in Trans Fat Labelling

Top 10 Foods With Trans Fats

Trans Fats Down In Many Snack Products, But Some Cheaper Snacks Still Have Significant Amounts