Deleting trans fat is no OK to gorge

Getting rid of trans fats in restaurant meals might be hip, but nutrition experts say it won't improve public health unless the ingredients that replace trans fats are a real improvement.

"You don't want to eliminate the trans fat products and then exchange them for saturated fats. That would defeat the purpose," Dr. Michael Miller, director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center, said yesterday after top Baltimore officials endorsed a ban on trans fats.

Following the lead of trend-setting New York, cities and counties have begun designating the man-made, artery-hardening fats as Public Enemy No. 1 in restaurant cooking, with Baltimore now poised to ban them in its eateries.

Experts agree that these partially hydrogenated oils top the list of the worst kinds of fat in our diets. Studies show that they not only increase so-called bad cholesterol but, unlike most other fats, also decrease good cholesterol.

Researchers suggest that eliminating industrially produced trans fats could prevent 72,000 to 228,000 heart attacks and related deaths each year in the United States.

"Trans fats are harmful for cardiovascular health, and there's no reason for them to be in the food," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. "It makes sense to remove them."

But doctors and nutritionists say the benefits of removing them from restaurant fryers and bakery recipes depend on what ingredients are added in their place.

Some potential replacements -- such as peanut, cottonseed and palm oils -- are laden with saturated fats and might be just as bad for consumers as trans fats themselves.

"We're certainly going in the right direction" by phasing out trans fats, said UM's Miller. "It's kind of the buzzword these days, but [removing them is] only doing half the job."

Julie Greenstein, deputy director of health promotion policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, disagreed, calling any switch a positive move. "It's the worst fat out there now," she said yesterday. "Whatever you change to is better than having trans fats in your food."

The history of partially hydrogenated oils begins in the late 19th century, according to a the Harvard School of Public Health. That's when chemists discovered they could turn vegetable oil into a solid by adding more hydrogen atoms and packing them closely to make the oil less liquid.

These oils not only had a much longer shelf life than earlier fats, they also were cheaper and could be heated repeatedly without breaking down.

Artificial trans fats became common in staples such as margarine and Crisco and found their way into processed snack foods and baked goods.

But they became even more widely used in the 1980s, when scientists actually thought they would be a healthy alternative to the saturated animal fats used by chains such as Dunkin Donuts and McDonald's to fry their foods. Under pressure from nutrition activists, the major chains switched to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

"When it was first used, we didn't think it was so harmful," Greenstein said.

But by the early 1990s, scientists were figuring out that trans fats were actually worse than animal fats. Since then, they have not only been linked to high cholesterol and heart disease, but also identified as possible contributors to insulin resistance, weight gain, hardening of the arteries and blood clots.

Trans fats have become a major target of nutrition advocates -- and fodder for many food industry health claims. In January 2006, the Food and Drug Administration began requiring that food labels list trans fats alongside calorie content and other nutritional facts.

Some companies have used this rule to their advantage, promoting their snack products as having "0 trans fats," a claim they can make if they contain less than half a gram per serving.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has petitioned the FDA to ban trans fats altogether. Denmark has essentially eliminated their use, and other nations have looked into limiting their application.

Meanwhile, jurisdictions that include New York City and Montgomery County began banning trans fats in restaurants, including fast-food establishments. The Baltimore City Council proposal to do so -- set for another vote Monday -- would take effect 18 months after it is enacted.

Dr. Dominique Ashen, a nurse practitioner at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease, said the city should ensure that restaurateurs make healthy choices when they switch. She said there are plenty of good alternatives, including soybean, corn, safflower, canola, olive and sunflower oil.

"You've got lots of choices," she said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that daily fat intake be no more than 30 percent of calories -- with a maximum of 7 percent from saturated fat sources such as cheese and meat. Nutritionists recommend as few trans fats as possible (small amounts occur naturally in some milk and meat products).

Michele Simon, author of Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, said the focus on trans fats is a distraction from the real problem: Americans eat unhealthy foods and eat too much. She said she wonders whether taking trans fats out of the equation will simply give some people license to eat more unhealthy foods -- as long as they are trans fat-free.

She called it the "Snackwell effect," after the low-fat cookie of that name. The phenomenon dates back to the fat-free food craze of the 1990s, when consumers thought they could eat as many fat-free cookies as they wanted -- and then gained weight because they were consuming more calories than before.

"Trans fat-free fried chicken or trans fat-free doughnuts are hardly an improvement," Simon said. "It can even backfire, with people thinking, now there are healthy french fries."

Said Rose Clifford, a dietitian with the MedStar Research Institute: "Just because you take the trans fats out of Fritos doesn't mean you should be gobbling up all the Fritos."

stephanie.desmon@baltsun.com

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