Alimentary dear Watson!

Health care professionals are becoming more and more aware that trans fatty acids derived from partially hydrogenated fats and oils (and found mostly in bakery products, snack foods, and fast foods [see Table 1]) pose a significant health risk.,5,10 But it's one thing to counsel patients to try to cut down on trans, and quite another to explain how. Especially since nutrition labels on packaged foods break down fats as saturates and unsaturates, and leave out trans fats all together. Fortunately, the calculation is fairly simple. Here's a typical label from a bag of store-bought cookies:

To calculate the trans fatty acids in each cookie:

1. look at total fat:4.0 9

2. Then subtract the total of unsaturates and saturates(3.0 g)

(i.e., polyunsaturates: 0.5 + monounsaturates: 1.7 + saturates: 0.8)

3. And the balance is likely the trans content. 1.0 g trans fatty adds

If the label doesn't provide nutrition information, tell your patients to check out the ingredients. Since they're listed according to weight, from most to least, consumers should be wary of foods listing (partially) hydrogenated vegetable fat or vegetable oil shortening among the first two or three ingredients. These benign sounding terms may camouflage the fact that when liquid oils are converted into solids (i.e., hydrogenated), the process results in "transformation!"

Copyright Alberta Association of Registered Nurses Jul/Aug 1999
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