Right cooking oil key to avoiding trans fats

Last Updated: 2003-11-20 13:54:29 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Sue Schwendener

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Former professional figure skater Dawn Mannina still exercises daily, but recently has been paying more attention to eating low-fat, healthy foods to keep her weight down.

"I usually cook with olive oil as opposed to corn oil," said Mannina, 40, who still skates occasionally in ice shows. "And I'm more conscious of the kinds of fats I eat."

Her search for low-fat cooking ingredients reflects that of many Americans as rising obesity in the United States has turned attention to an overlooked but widespread source of dietary fat: vegetable oils.

Until recently, many consumers were unaware that food processing can turn many of the most popular cooking oils into ticking time bombs for arteries.

Those little bombs are "trans fats," which the government has deemed dangerous enough to require labeling in U.S. food products beginning in 2006.

"Trans fats are bad fats. The less trans fat you and I eat, the healthier we will be," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said on July 9 when he announced the government's labeling requirement.

"Trans fats can no longer lurk, hidden, in our food choices," FDA commissioner Mark McClellan told reporters.

But how can Americans track their trans fat consumption before 2006, when the nationwide labeling begins?

Trans fats are created by a chemical process during manufacturing called hydrogenation. It gives products longer shelf life.

Trans fats raise "bad cholesterol" and decrease "good cholesterol" - and are in 90 percent of cookies and 75 percent of the snack chips that Americans eat, according to Lola O'Rourke, a nutritionist for the Chicago-based American Dietetic Association.

In fact, any food label that now lists "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil" includes trans fats, she said.

In response to the 2006 deadline, the food industry - from ice cream makers to bakers to frozen food manufacturers-- has made pledges to cut out trans fats.

On the same day the government announced the labeling mandate, Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo Inc., said it had already begun eliminating trans fats from Doritos, Tostitos and Cheetos, three core brands. The company also said it had begun early this year changing packaging to give the trans fat content.

Also in July, the world's largest vegetable oil processor, Archer Daniels Midland, launched a line of zero and reduced trans fat oils and shortenings that can be used in baking, frying, confectionery, snack and cereal products.

FOR CONSUMERS, WHAT NOW?

As the food industry scrambles to find healthier oils, nutritionists say the best that consumers can do right now is to choose the healthiest cooking oil possible, and - equally important - limit overall consumption.

"If you were to rank all the oils that are best to cook with, certainly the two or three that rank highest would be canola, olive and perhaps safflower oil," said Dr. Frederick Hatfield, president of The International Sports Sciences Association and author of more than 60 books on nutrition, fitness and performance nutrition.

"For my money, I would want to find a source for cooking oil that has not been over-processed and refined and that is still very high in mono-unsaturated fats," he said.

Saturated fatty acids have only single carbon-to-carbon bonds and are the least reactive chemically, while unsaturated fatty acids have one (mono) or more (poly) carbon-carbon bonds.

Corn, sunflower and soybean oils are examples of vegetable oils rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids - the kinds Mannina has been advised to avoid.

"I would put olive and flaxseed oil toward the top, and going on down the list: canola, peanut, soybean, safflower, sunflower," the ADA's O'Rourke said.

"(But) while vegetable oils are preferable to animal fats, quantity consumed still needs to be limited," she stressed. "More is not always better.


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