GM Kills $10 Million Facebook Ad Campaign Because It Didn't Work
JCPenney's Ron Johnson: 'Customers Don't Get Our Pricing Strategy'
For nearly 10 years now, I've been fiercely guarding my shopping cart. The wicked would-be interloper: partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, also known as trans fats or trans fatty acids. And it's in everything, from wheat bread to soup to my favorite sticky candy bars. For a while, I was a lone voice and a lone label-reader, inspecting in the wilderness of my grocery store aisles without another soul to fight against the cheap, shelf-stable, yet bad-for-your-heart fat.In the past few years, a growing public backlash against the stuff, known to contribute to heart disease and obesity, has led to its removal from many major products, from Lay's chips to sandwich cookies. Most Trader Joe's products are now free of the substance (and thus, it's my favorite place to shop). And then, this month, came the New York City ban: no restaurants will be permitted to use trans-fatty acids in cooking oils come July, 2007 -- and trans fats will be banned entirely from all foods available in restaurants by July 2008. This week the Washington State Board of Health announced it was considering a similar ban throughout the northwestern state.
Should you join me and New York City's best (and not-so-best) restaurants? Should you ban trans-fatty acids from your pantry, too? I looked at a bunch of products in my local grocery store to evaluate whether they were worth banning and whether or not my budget could manage it.
The first thing I noticed while walking through my grocery store aisles: things have changed! Many of the products that have been perennially marked off my list due to huge amounts of trans fats, from Oreos to breads to many frozen convenience foods, had either removed entirely or greatly reduced the trans fats. I'd taken this "black list" of products with tons of trans fats as my guide, and was surprised to see that, in some categories, it was a struggle to find a violator. Of course, as the FDA allows food manufacturers to round down, not up, your choice could contain up to 0.49 grams of trans fat per serving and still advertise "trans fat free" -- so you'll want to check labels for partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.
Worst: Pillsbury "Grands" refrigerated biscuit dough, 3.5 grams of trans fats per serving. I adore refrigerated biscuits, even though I shouldn't (and the darned things always scare me when they pop open). But my longtime ban on the pop-and-bake biscuits will just have to stay in force, as nearly half of the fat grams come from trans fats even though they advertise "better tastin'" and "homestyle." (Whose home, exactly, is that?) Pillsbury's "artificially flavored" buttermilk biscuits advertise no trans fats, and the Safeway-brand generic version of the buttermilk biscuit was also trans-fat free. Even so, I'll stick with my messier, far yummier option: my own homemade biscuits (packed with butter and cream). - Not in the foreseeable future: margarine, 1.5-2.5 grams of trans fat per serving, depending on the brand. Margarine was the first, greatest use of the cheap, shelf-stable trans fats -- and my family's table, like most every one in the 70s and 80s, was always topped with a cube or tub of the slithery stuff. At less than a dollar per pound for many of the cheaper brands compared to $3+ per pound for butter, margarine is also the budget choice.
Don't let your body suffer for your wallet's good fortune -- in my house, butter is the only choice. 
Pretty bad: Reser's dips and similar mass-produced dips, 1 gram trans fat per serving. While sour cream, onions, and clams are the label stars, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils make up far too much of this refrigerated product. These sell for $1.59 in my grocery store. The deli dips, an aisle over, are packed with good spinach and sour cream and no trans fats -- although their price is more than double. - Also still banned from my pantry: Pillsbury refrigerated sugar cookie dough, 1.5 grams of trans fat per serving. It's such a great idea: home-baked sugar cookies without the measuring and mess! But this whole category of products has always been stuffed with trans fats. Good news, though: change is a-coming in. Nestle's Tollhouse Cookies were free of trans fats, and not much more expensive than Pillsbury's sugar cookies in my grocery store.
- Totino's or DiGiorno? While Totino's is certainly the cheaper option (you can often find the company's "party pizzas" for $1 at my grocery store), the package contains 0.5 grams of trans fats per serving, compared to none in DiGiorno pizza. Yes, DiGiornio is healthier -- but at more than three times the price, you'll probably want to make this decision on taste, not trans fat content.
- Good surprises: Oreos, Cool Whip, and Orowheat bread, zero grams trans fat per serving. When I was in high school, you could give me a box of Oreos and a tub of Cool Whip and I'd be in heaven. But when I decided to remove trans fats from my diet, out went Oreos, and soon after Cool Whip was tossed to the way side. It was Trader Joe's Jo-jos and real whipped cream from there on out.
Color me surprised during my label-inspecting trip to the grocery store this week. I picked up a tub of Cool Whip and was shocked to see 0 grams of trans fats on the label. I almost put a tub in my cart right then and there (but I only had diapers on my list...). Same with Oreos. Nabisco has managed to nearly eliminated trans fats from its famously chocolatey cookies. The store brand, "Tuxedos," still had several grams of trans fats in its formulation, though.
Another big item on trans-fat black lists is white and wheat bread. Most major brands were chocked full of trans fats only a few years ago. But in my shopping trip, I was unable to find a loaf of bread in my local Safeway's aisles with more than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving -- and most of proudly advertised "trans fat free." 
Thank you Pepsi: Lay's Chips and Cheetos, zero grams trans fat per serving. Most commercially-available potato chips and cheese snacks were some of the first to switch to partially hydrogenated vegetable oils when they were first developed, and small chip makers like Kettle Brand and Utz set themselves apart by using healthier oils. But Pepsi's Frito-Lay division made a decision to switch to trans-fat-free oil in late 2002 and the market has been catching up since. Now most of the company's products boast "0 grams trans fat."- Healthy Choice is the healthy choice, zero grams trans fat per serving. While many of the budget options on the frozen foods aisle (like Banquet meals) still do have a small amount of trans fats, between 0.5 and 1 gram per serving depending upon the meal, none of the Healthy Choice frozen meals whose labels I inspected had any trans fats. Healthy Choice sounds like it will be my choice -- although, at about three times the price, this is another one I'd suggest you consider based on quality as well as trans fat content (the Banquet Chicken Nuggets Meal I brought home at my four-year-old's insistence was pretty icky, with all-dark-meat nuggets that my gourmet toddler refused to eat).
Goldman Earnings Sink After Buffett Dividend
Johnson & Johnson's Income Falls 23%
Burberry Shares Leap on Sales Update
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 5)
12-23-2006 @ 1:59PM
jean Lillibridge said...
I am so happy my daughter keeps hydrogenated oils and high fructose cornsyrup out of her house and her 5 and 8 year old, ask if foods contain either when they are eating outside of their home.
I am surprised to see how poorly so many people spell!!
12-23-2006 @ 2:26PM
Wm. Robinson said...
Thank you for this list.....I can start shoping for them right away! I apreciate foods with flavor, not this "0 transfat crap"!
We love REAL butter,RED meatfresh, Baked goods, FRIED foods, vegetables & salads...in other words "we eat a variety of EVERYTHING WITH FLAVOR".
I rember when "they" started bannig smoking, I said "just wait, next they`ll ban french fries, fast food, and all the rest of the thing that people enjoy." Well guess what ....here it is! Please, just becareful of the "band wagon that you jump onto"...before you know it ALL of the thing that we enjoy will be ILLEAGLE!!!
12-23-2006 @ 2:55PM
Val Fitzgerald said...
To Laurel, Glen and the rest of you who insist on blaming Cindy's food choices for her heart problems, you should do some catching up on the literature. Start with Nature and Cell magazines, and while you're at it, order up a years' worth of Morbidity and Mortality (weekly reports from the CDC on various causes of disease and death). Then you will have a couple of intellectual legs to stand on when you try to lay Cindy's problems on the foods that she eats. None of which legs, by the way, disregard genetics OR immune system problems (also genetic in nature) as direct causes for most coronary and/or coronary artery diseases. Cindy, you may contact me at jvaljon1@aol.com for further talk on the subject, if you wish. I can't discuss your particular problems because I haven't seen you and don't know your family history, but I may be able to provide you with the know-how to tease out what's different about you from the rest of your family. As to dolts who fulminate against what you USED to eat (OH LOL!) pay them no mind, other than the chuckle that their ignorance should provide you with.
I mean, when someone says that the reason that hydrogenated oils are so bad, is that 'the digestive system can't process them--' I'd have to ask: then how the hell do you think that these oils get in the human bpdy to start with? The digestive system most definitely has to process anything that gets into your coronary arteries (and that procedure is mainly performed in the small intestine) (OH LOL! That one did provide me with a good chuckle, on this otherwise grey day...) Val
12-23-2006 @ 11:17PM
Val Fitzgerald said...
To Laurel, Glen and the rest of you who insist on blaming Cindy's food choices for her heart problems, you should do some catching up on the literature. Start with Nature and Cell magazines, and while you're at it, order up a years' worth of Morbidity and Mortality (weekly reports from the CDC on various causes of disease and death). Then you will have a couple of intellectual legs to stand on when you try to lay Cindy's problems on the foods that she eats. None of which legs, by the way, disregard genetics OR immune system problems (also genetic in nature) as direct causes for most coronary and/or coronary artery diseases. Cindy, you may contact me at jvaljon1@aol.com for further talk on the subject, if you wish. I can't discuss your particular problems because I haven't seen you and don't know your family history, but I may be able to provide you with the know-how to tease out what's different about you from the rest of your family. As to dolts who fulminate against what you USED to eat (OH LOL!) pay them no mind, other than the chuckle that their ignorance should provide you with.
I mean, when someone says that the reason that hydrogenated oils are so bad, is that 'the digestive system can't process them--' I'd have to ask: then how the hell do you think that these oils get in the human bpdy to start with? The digestive system most definitely has to process anything that gets into your coronary arteries (and that procedure is mainly performed in the small intestine) (OH LOL! That one did provide me with a good chuckle, on this otherwise grey day...) Val
12-24-2006 @ 9:58AM
Cindi said...
Letter published in the Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2006
Dear Editors:
Mr. Sokolov's defense of trans fats (July 27, 2006) misses several important points. Trans fats in Crisco and other vegetable shortenings are cheap and do indeed increase the shelf life of processed foods, but the scientific evidence continues to show that they contribute to a myriad of health problems, shortening human life and exacting a heavy toll in health costs.
Trans fats inhibit cell membrane function, interfere with the enzyme systems the body needs to eliminate carcinogens and toxins (thus contributing to cancer), inhibit insulin receptors (causing type 2 diabetes) and decrease hormone production (leading to infertility). Most tragically, trans fats in the diet of pregnant women contribute to low birth weight babies and inhibit visual and neurological function; they lower fat content in mothers milk and depress learning ability, particularly in situations of stress.
Mr. Sokolov argues that trans fats are just as likely as other fats to make us fat. But recent research from Wake Forest University indicates that trans fats are more likely to cause weight gain than other fats (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=45100). Furthermore, when manufacturers use trans fats for frying, more fat ends up in the food. Food fried in trans fats is much greasier than food fried in saturated animal fat such as tallow or lard.
The food industry justifies the use of trans fats with the claim that the alternative, saturated fats, raise cholesterol and contribute to heart disease. This premise is completely false. Before the introduction of trans fats into the food supply, Americans consumed large amounts of saturated fat in butter, lard, tallow, coconut oil and palm oil, yet myocardial infarction (heart attack) was unknown. Today, the European countries with the highest level of saturated fat consumption (France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Iceland, Belgium, Finland and Austria) have the lowest rates of heart disease and the countries with the lowest level of saturated fat consumption (Ukraine, Macedonia, Croatia, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Georgia) have the highest rates of heart disease. Saturated animal fats provide many nutrients that protect our most important muscle, the heart, including cholesterol, which is vital to the function of our muscles. A recent study found that saturated fats can actually reverse atherosclerosis (Am J Clin Nutr 80 2004 1175-84).
Mr. Sokolov is right when he asserts that people will continue to eat fried food and all of us will continue to pay for soaring health costs when that food is fried in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Liquid polyunsaturated vegetable oils are not a good alternative as they become dangerously rancid when heated, hence the unpleasant taste. The appropriate action for the Chicago City Council and other government agencies is to encourage a return to stable, healthy saturated fats such as palm oil, coconut oil, tallow and lard in processed and fried foods.
Mary G. Enig, PhD, President
The Maryland Nutritionists Association
Sally Fallon, President
The Weston A. Price Foundation
12-24-2006 @ 4:54PM
Mona Bloom said...
salt content in convenience foods is way too high for high BP persons, of whom there are many in the country. What is to be done about it?
1-02-2007 @ 10:52PM
Corinne said...
When 1 in 3 children living in poverty are also obese, does it not seem releveant that the food manufacturers are replacing real food content with cheaper chemicals. at the bottom of the food chain h0omeless & low income families have to choose from the dollar menu or dollar store options . the transfat issue is important because the food options are no cooking in a motelroom /hostel environment or Food Bank charity meals. Food has to stay viable ( not fresh - thats often a luxury)and be simple to eat. Living on 200dollars month or less obviously narrows choices.Poor diet limits positive responses to crisis. Manufacturers should be responsible for the outcome of their cost cutting ingredients. The population with little or no choice has torely on the people who make the choices to be aware & concerned!
1-02-2007 @ 6:43PM
Sandra said...
I am glad we are pressuring to get trans fats out of our diets. I come from a family with a cholesterol problem and they had so much atheroscherosis. My Dad had an arterial valve replacement and a triple by pass and it kept him alive 15 more years. Does anyone know is Crisco all trans-fat? That replaced the lard used in baking that was in his diet and mine too. I have to watch my cholesterol all the time.
1-03-2007 @ 5:03AM
brad said...
What a lot of you who are bitching about "big brother banning my favorite things" fail to understand is banning trans fat has no impact on you and what you can enjoy. Cigarettes and all sorts of other things have a purpose for the user, perceived or real. Trans fat has only one purpose. Cheaper for food companies. With a trans fat ban you can still enjoy all the foods you did before. They will still taste the same. They just wont be as unnecessarily unhealthy.
1-04-2007 @ 6:10PM
Flax Seed said...
Im always leery to regulate something like that, to much big government as it it, but its not good what they do. Maybe at the least a big red sticker showing that it is in there.
1-09-2007 @ 10:02PM
Tony said...
It's great to see increased awareness of the health implications of Trans Fats. Now parents are asking schools to prepare healthier student lunches, restaurant chains are jumping on the wagon, and state legislators are starting to take this issue more seriously. There is hope!!
Sarah, thanks for writing a great piece.