Trans fats in the news again

The World Health Organization has issued a set of guidelines for eradicating trans fats from global food supplies by 2023. They argue that if adopted, some 10 million lives may be saved. I don’t usually care about food warnings, but in the case of trans fats, the warnings are warranted. (You may have thought that the U.S. had already banned trans fats. Actually, the ban doesn’t go into effect until this month.)

Trans fat is oil to which hydrogen has been added in a process called hydrogenation (or partial hydrogenation), turning the liquid oil into a solid like butter. Think Crisco. Baked goods, such as cookies and crackers, are (or were) commonly manufactured using trans fats. The term, trans, means “across,” and refers to the way in which the hydrogen atoms get rearranged in the fat molecule such that the liquid is turned into a solid. While this molecular change may seem trivial, its effect changes the fat’s capacity to bind to enzymes in your body, an effect with consequences for your health.

Trans fats compromise many bodily functions, including hormone synthesis, immune function, insulin metabolism, and tissue repair. They impair the structure and properties of cell membranes, especially those in crucial tissues such as the immune system and the brain. Trans fats are also dramatically increase a subclass of LDL cholesterol which is composed of small dense particles and is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Americans ate a negligible amount of trans fats. Beginning about the ‘50s, believing that saturated fats were implicated in heart disease, medical organizations, such as the American Heart Association, and government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, urged Americans to abandon traditional fats, such as butter, in favor of trans fats, such as margarine.  Now the Harvard School of Public Health is saying that eliminating trans fats from the American diet would prevent 250,000 heart attacks and related deaths every year. (Denmark restricted trans fats in 2004; by 2010 the incidence of heart disease and related deaths dropped 60 percent.)

As frequently happens, the “experts” got it all wrong, probably because in dietary studies trans fats were lumped with animal (saturated) fats, skewing the results. Actually, Fred A. Kummerow, a professor at the University of Illinois, had spoken about about the dangers of trans fats, publishing his research as early as 1957. Not only was his work criticized, it was dismissed. Big mistake.

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