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Right
Cooking Oil Key
to Avoiding Trans Fats
Some research for low-fat cooking
ingredients reflects that of many have 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 could
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.
Reference
Source 89
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