Elana
07-10-2003, 03:31 PM
(July 10) -- Consumers will soon get a much clearer idea of just how bad that glazed doughnut -- and even that little wheat cracker -- is for their health.
In the biggest regulatory change for the food industry in a decade, the federal government issued a long-awaited rule requiring food makers to list the amount of harmful, artery-clogging fats known as \"trans fats\" on their product labels.
Though trans fats are found naturally in meats and some dairy products, Americans ingest far greater amounts of them from munching cookies, chips and other snack foods -- including some that are labeled as \"low fat.\"
Nearly all fried and baked goods have some trans fats, and nutritionists believe they are so noxious that no level is entirely safe. Not only do trans fats raise so-called bad cholesterol, but they also lower good cholesterol, the stuff that reduces risk of clogged arteries.
The new requirement, issued by the Food and Drug Administration, will force food companies to add a line to nutrition labels showing how many grams of trans fats are included in each serving. The revised labels won\'t be mandatory until Jan. 1, 2006 -- the government usually gives companies long lead times to respond to new regulations to avoid disrupting business -- but consumers are likely to see them sooner, especially on products with little or no trans fats.
The regulation could have big implications for the food industry as well as individual eating habits -- just as requiring warning labels on cigarettes nearly four decades ago led many people to give up smoking and sent the tobacco industry searching for lower-nicotine products. Already a number of companies, including Kraft Foods Inc. and McDonald\'s Corp. are scrambling for ways to reduce trans fats while keeping the familiar taste and texture in their popular products.
PepsiCo\'s Frito-Lay has succeeded in lessening or abolishing trans fats in its Doritos, Tostitos and Cheetos snacks -- and has already put the newly required trans-fat line on their nutrition labels to tout the change. Legal Seafoods, a closely held group of 28 restaurants on the East Coast, started using a reduced trans-fat oil to fry its famous fish and switched its supplier of oyster crackers to one that doesn\'t use trans fats.
Just Wednesday, Unilever Best Foods North America, a unit of Unilever PLC, announced it plans to eliminate trans fats from its entire line of I Can\'t Believe It\'s Not Butter spreads by the middle of next year.
But reformulating won\'t be easy for most companies. All fats, including trans fats, provide flavor and texture to foods. Last September, McDonald\'s grabbed headlines when it vowed to introduce a new oil that would cut trans fat in its fried foods, including halving the amount in its French fries. But so far, the company only has been able to cut trans fat in some fried-chicken products. It has put a hold on changing the oil for its fries, citing concerns about altering the taste. The chain says it continues testing.
Kraft, the nation\'s largest food company and maker of Oreo cookies and Oscar Mayer Lunchables, says it has been making strides in eliminating or reducing trans fats, but isn\'t sure when it will be able to complete the task. The toughest challenge is with \"sandwich cookies,\" like Oreos (which contain 2.5 grams of trans fat per three-cookie serving) because it\'s difficult to get the cream filling to maintain its texture and shelf life without trans fats.
Food makers have turned for guidance to companies like Cargill, which has sold a line of both liquid and solid oils with reduced levels of trans fats for nearly a decade. It is easy to take trans fats out of chips, but baked goods are harder, said Willie Loh of Cargill\'s specialty-canola-oils unit. \"Some companies may need to make changes to manufacturing,\" said Mr. Loh.
The new labels won\'t mean much for consumers who don\'t have additional knowledge and guidance. They won\'t put trans fats in context of a day\'s diet so people will have no way to glean from the label how much trans fat is a lot. As they can with other nutrients on the label, companies will be allowed to round down the amount of trans fat as zero grams per serving if the amount is anything under 0.5 gram. Similarly, if one serving of cookies has 1.4 grams of trans fat, the label can round down to list it as 1 gram.
Growing Awareness
The level of saturated fats -- which also raise bad cholesterol and are more common than trans fats -- has been listed on food labels since they were first required in the early 1990s. But it was only in the past several years that scientists became aware of how harmful trans fats are, and a movement developed to add them to food labels.
Now consumers will get the full \"bad-fat\" content from labels. (Other fats are generally beneficial because they help lower cholesterol.)
People should try to keep their intake of saturated and trans fats combined to 10% or less of the total calories they consume each day, says Scott Grundy, a well-known lipid specialist in Texas. That guideline applies not just to adults but to children over age two. The benchmarks are even lower for those already at risk of heart disease or with high cholesterol. They should get no more than 7% of calories from bad fats, for a total of 15.5 grams a day.
All this means a generally healthy person who eats 2,000 calories a day, should consume no more than 20 grams of saturated and trans fats.
Have a glazed donut for breakfast and you have eaten 6 grams of so-called bad fats. Grab a lunch of a Big Mac, fries and a soft drink and you\'ve used up all 20 grams of your daily bad-fat allowance. The average American, however, eats a 2,250-calorie diet with about 15%, or 35 grams, coming from bad fat a day. \"People have a ways to go\" to reach the advisable ranges, said Margo Wootan of the nutrition advocacy group the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The trans-fat content in doughnuts and Big Macs may not come as much surprise. But the new labels are likely to contain some startling information for other products. According to research by Consumer Reports magazine, a serving of Nabisco Wheat Thins baked crackers (about 16 crackers) has 3.5 grams of bad fats. That is worse than Sunshine\'s Cheese-It crackers which have 3 grams of bad fat a serving. Kellogg\'s Cracklin\' Oat Bran cereal has 3.5 grams of bad fat a serving, more than a container of chocolate Jello Pudding Snacks, which has 2.5 grams.
Consumer intake of trans fats really took off when food makers figured out how to add hydrogen to vegetable oil. The process, called hydrogenation, makes the oil more solid at room temperature. Hydrogenated oils make pastries flakier, breads moister and cookies fresher-tasting. It also delivers flavor in frozen foods and quick-preparation meals.
Nutrition researchers have known the perils of trans fats for years. But getting even the bare-bones quantity listing on food labels took nearly four years of wrangling between the FDA and the food industry. The industry beat back a proposal that would have prevented companies from touting their products as \"lean\" or \"heart healthy\" if they contained high levels of trans fats. The industry also scored a major win by getting the FDA to jettison a proposed footnote to labels that would have advised consumers to keep their intake of trans fats as low as possible.
The cautionary footnote was proposed by a panel of doctors convened to advise the government on the trans-fat issue. After reviewing the science, the panel concluded that even the smallest amount of trans fat increases the risk of coronary heart disease so it couldn\'t tell consumers how much trans fats they could eat without worrying. \"There is no level at which there is no adverse effect,\" says Suzanne Hendrich, a professor at Iowa State University and a panel member.
Still, some nutritionists now worry that the focus on trans fats will lead people to lose sight of saturated fats. On average, Americans get 12% to 13% of their daily calories from saturated fats, but only 2% to 3% from trans fats, said Penny Kris-Etherton, a nutrition professor at Penn State University. \"Don\'t get so waylaid by thinking about trans fats and forget about the bigger issue of saturated fat.\"
Copyright © 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
In the biggest regulatory change for the food industry in a decade, the federal government issued a long-awaited rule requiring food makers to list the amount of harmful, artery-clogging fats known as \"trans fats\" on their product labels.
Though trans fats are found naturally in meats and some dairy products, Americans ingest far greater amounts of them from munching cookies, chips and other snack foods -- including some that are labeled as \"low fat.\"
Nearly all fried and baked goods have some trans fats, and nutritionists believe they are so noxious that no level is entirely safe. Not only do trans fats raise so-called bad cholesterol, but they also lower good cholesterol, the stuff that reduces risk of clogged arteries.
The new requirement, issued by the Food and Drug Administration, will force food companies to add a line to nutrition labels showing how many grams of trans fats are included in each serving. The revised labels won\'t be mandatory until Jan. 1, 2006 -- the government usually gives companies long lead times to respond to new regulations to avoid disrupting business -- but consumers are likely to see them sooner, especially on products with little or no trans fats.
The regulation could have big implications for the food industry as well as individual eating habits -- just as requiring warning labels on cigarettes nearly four decades ago led many people to give up smoking and sent the tobacco industry searching for lower-nicotine products. Already a number of companies, including Kraft Foods Inc. and McDonald\'s Corp. are scrambling for ways to reduce trans fats while keeping the familiar taste and texture in their popular products.
PepsiCo\'s Frito-Lay has succeeded in lessening or abolishing trans fats in its Doritos, Tostitos and Cheetos snacks -- and has already put the newly required trans-fat line on their nutrition labels to tout the change. Legal Seafoods, a closely held group of 28 restaurants on the East Coast, started using a reduced trans-fat oil to fry its famous fish and switched its supplier of oyster crackers to one that doesn\'t use trans fats.
Just Wednesday, Unilever Best Foods North America, a unit of Unilever PLC, announced it plans to eliminate trans fats from its entire line of I Can\'t Believe It\'s Not Butter spreads by the middle of next year.
But reformulating won\'t be easy for most companies. All fats, including trans fats, provide flavor and texture to foods. Last September, McDonald\'s grabbed headlines when it vowed to introduce a new oil that would cut trans fat in its fried foods, including halving the amount in its French fries. But so far, the company only has been able to cut trans fat in some fried-chicken products. It has put a hold on changing the oil for its fries, citing concerns about altering the taste. The chain says it continues testing.
Kraft, the nation\'s largest food company and maker of Oreo cookies and Oscar Mayer Lunchables, says it has been making strides in eliminating or reducing trans fats, but isn\'t sure when it will be able to complete the task. The toughest challenge is with \"sandwich cookies,\" like Oreos (which contain 2.5 grams of trans fat per three-cookie serving) because it\'s difficult to get the cream filling to maintain its texture and shelf life without trans fats.
Food makers have turned for guidance to companies like Cargill, which has sold a line of both liquid and solid oils with reduced levels of trans fats for nearly a decade. It is easy to take trans fats out of chips, but baked goods are harder, said Willie Loh of Cargill\'s specialty-canola-oils unit. \"Some companies may need to make changes to manufacturing,\" said Mr. Loh.
The new labels won\'t mean much for consumers who don\'t have additional knowledge and guidance. They won\'t put trans fats in context of a day\'s diet so people will have no way to glean from the label how much trans fat is a lot. As they can with other nutrients on the label, companies will be allowed to round down the amount of trans fat as zero grams per serving if the amount is anything under 0.5 gram. Similarly, if one serving of cookies has 1.4 grams of trans fat, the label can round down to list it as 1 gram.
Growing Awareness
The level of saturated fats -- which also raise bad cholesterol and are more common than trans fats -- has been listed on food labels since they were first required in the early 1990s. But it was only in the past several years that scientists became aware of how harmful trans fats are, and a movement developed to add them to food labels.
Now consumers will get the full \"bad-fat\" content from labels. (Other fats are generally beneficial because they help lower cholesterol.)
People should try to keep their intake of saturated and trans fats combined to 10% or less of the total calories they consume each day, says Scott Grundy, a well-known lipid specialist in Texas. That guideline applies not just to adults but to children over age two. The benchmarks are even lower for those already at risk of heart disease or with high cholesterol. They should get no more than 7% of calories from bad fats, for a total of 15.5 grams a day.
All this means a generally healthy person who eats 2,000 calories a day, should consume no more than 20 grams of saturated and trans fats.
Have a glazed donut for breakfast and you have eaten 6 grams of so-called bad fats. Grab a lunch of a Big Mac, fries and a soft drink and you\'ve used up all 20 grams of your daily bad-fat allowance. The average American, however, eats a 2,250-calorie diet with about 15%, or 35 grams, coming from bad fat a day. \"People have a ways to go\" to reach the advisable ranges, said Margo Wootan of the nutrition advocacy group the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The trans-fat content in doughnuts and Big Macs may not come as much surprise. But the new labels are likely to contain some startling information for other products. According to research by Consumer Reports magazine, a serving of Nabisco Wheat Thins baked crackers (about 16 crackers) has 3.5 grams of bad fats. That is worse than Sunshine\'s Cheese-It crackers which have 3 grams of bad fat a serving. Kellogg\'s Cracklin\' Oat Bran cereal has 3.5 grams of bad fat a serving, more than a container of chocolate Jello Pudding Snacks, which has 2.5 grams.
Consumer intake of trans fats really took off when food makers figured out how to add hydrogen to vegetable oil. The process, called hydrogenation, makes the oil more solid at room temperature. Hydrogenated oils make pastries flakier, breads moister and cookies fresher-tasting. It also delivers flavor in frozen foods and quick-preparation meals.
Nutrition researchers have known the perils of trans fats for years. But getting even the bare-bones quantity listing on food labels took nearly four years of wrangling between the FDA and the food industry. The industry beat back a proposal that would have prevented companies from touting their products as \"lean\" or \"heart healthy\" if they contained high levels of trans fats. The industry also scored a major win by getting the FDA to jettison a proposed footnote to labels that would have advised consumers to keep their intake of trans fats as low as possible.
The cautionary footnote was proposed by a panel of doctors convened to advise the government on the trans-fat issue. After reviewing the science, the panel concluded that even the smallest amount of trans fat increases the risk of coronary heart disease so it couldn\'t tell consumers how much trans fats they could eat without worrying. \"There is no level at which there is no adverse effect,\" says Suzanne Hendrich, a professor at Iowa State University and a panel member.
Still, some nutritionists now worry that the focus on trans fats will lead people to lose sight of saturated fats. On average, Americans get 12% to 13% of their daily calories from saturated fats, but only 2% to 3% from trans fats, said Penny Kris-Etherton, a nutrition professor at Penn State University. \"Don\'t get so waylaid by thinking about trans fats and forget about the bigger issue of saturated fat.\"
Copyright © 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved