The truth about nutritional labels and trans fats
There's an unknown trick manufacturers of food are doing when they use trans fats in food. If you've looked at nutritional labels lately, you would notice that foods are listed in increments of .5 grams
What you don't know, is that it is legal to have a product with only .4 grams of trans fat, and list is as having 0 grams of trans fat because it does not meet the minimum increment of .5 grams.
Now, you're saying, so what. We're talking .4 of a gram of trans fats, so no big deal.
Take a tub of ice-cream with 12 servings. If there's .4 grams of trans fats in each serving, you'll ingest almost 5 grams of trans fats if you eat the entire tub over the course of a week or so. But according to the label there's 0 grams of trans fat per serving, so that would lead one to believe that there are no trans fats in this product. If you're an ice-cream fanatic and have one serving a day every day for a year, that's 146 grams of trans fat you'd unknowingly ingest that year. Now do I have your attention?
Don't just look for the trans fat in grams; take a peek down in the ingredients. If you see the words "partially hydrogenated" or "shortening" in the ingredients list, it has trans fats. Be careful eating products with labels from outside the US. They may contain partially hydrogenated oil but it's not actually listed on the label, and you won't even see the term trans fats listed. Assume tall unlabeled baked and fried foods contain partially hydrogenated oil.
My other blogs can be seen at
Obesity blog
Linear Mode
