Some food companies replacing trans fats ahead of FDA deadline

Nearly two years before a new food-labeling rule takes effect, unhealthy trans fats are already beginning to disappear from many popular foods. That shift is generally good news for consumers, but it makes it more important than ever to read food labels.

While some food companies have switched to unsaturated “good” fats or new high-tech oils that can boost the proportion of heart-healthy fats in a food, others are substituting highly saturated fats that aren’t much healthier than the trans fats they replace.

The Food and Drug Administration has given food companies until 2006 to put trans-fat content on food labels. Trans fats are the partially hydrogenated oils used in processed foods to improve shelf life, among other reasons. The artery-clogging fats have been linked with an increased risk for heart disease and other health worries. One Harvard study found that replacing hydrogenated oils in foods with their natural oil equivalent would reduce the U.S. diabetes rate by 40 percent.

What is surprising is the sheer number of foods that have made the trans-fat switch so far ahead of the deadline. Every snack chip from PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division is now trans-fat-free. Some margarine brands and several cereals have also made the switch — including Cocoa Puffs. And Kraft Food Inc.’s Nabisco Oreos, normally laden with hydrogenated oils, have introduced a trans-fat-free Golden Oreo cookie. (The traditional variety still contains trans fats.)

But reducing trans fats in foods is a technological challenge for food companies, which risk changing the texture, taste and shelf life of products when they replace hydrogenated oils with something else. Many food makers are reverting to tropical oils such as palm oil and coconut oil because they are relatively cheap and similar in texture to partially hydrogenated oils, which have the consistency of Crisco shortening. But ironically, it was health concerns over these tropical oils — which are highly saturated fats — that helped prompt food makers to use hydrogenated oils in the first place. While most experts now agree that trans fats are the worst kind of fat, high consumption of saturated fats can also lead to heart disease.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which lobbied for the trans-fat-labeling requirement, complained last week to the FDA that some food labels are misleading consumers into believing that palm oil and other tropical oils are significantly more healthful than trans fats. Coconut oil, for instance, is 92 percent saturated, making it more saturated than butter, beef tallow or even lard.

But not every food can be made with a more heart-healthy unsaturated oil. Monounsaturated fats, like those found in olive and canola oil, and polyunsaturated fats, like those found in corn and soybean oils, have been shown to lower bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol. But they are also liquid, making it difficult to use them when reformulating foods, and they turn rancid sooner, giving products a shorter shelf life.

“They have to replace trans fats with a fat that will have the same functionality,” says Fred Caporaso, professor of food science and nutrition at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. “Croissants can’t be made with polyunsaturated fats — they’re just not going to be the same.”

Even so, some companies have managed to make the switch. Frito-Lay now uses mostly corn oil, which is just 13 percent saturated, to cook its snack chips. The switch hasn’t changed the total calories or fat content, but it has shifted the proportion of fats in the snacks. Before the change, Cheetos contained three grams of trans fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat and just 4.5 grams of healthful unsaturated fats. Today, the trans fat is gone, the saturated fat has dropped to 1.5 grams and the good fat has jumped to 8.5 grams.

Some product labels may soon also begin listing “interesterified,” “high stearate” or “stearic rich” oils on the food label. Surprisingly, these structured fats are made through a hydrogenation process that doesn’t result in trans fats. The FDA recently ruled that fats made this way aren’t required to include the word “hydrogenation” on the food label.

In addition, the process can dramatically boost the proportion of healthy fats in a food. A cinnamon danish made with stearic-based fats, for instance, would have 13 grams of total fat — the same as one made with palm oil. But the stearic-fat Danish would have 30 percent more good fat and 30 percent less saturated fat than the palm-oil version, according to Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., which makes an interesterified soybean oil.

Researchers are continuing to study stearic-based fats to be sure they are healthful. “From everything that’s been looked at, they seem to be OK,” says Harvard nutrition professor Walter Willett. “But we want to be cautious and use natural oils whenever possible.”