Good Fats, Bad Fats, Transfats

You're at Risk from More Than Sugar or Salt in Your Favorite Snack Food

You may have heard or read that new food packaging information guidelines will make it easier for you to determine whether transfats are included in your favorite snacks. But what is all too frequently missing in such reports is exactly what a transfat is and why you don't want to consume it.

As a friend of mine wrote me in email the other day, "Am I really sure I don't want transfats? Sure, they sound bad, but I also notice that they come in my all-time fave treats. All the ‘good for me' stuff usually tastes like cardboard."

Fear not, American snackers: the loss of transfats in packaged chips, cookies, and other delectable snack fare probably won't be missed - not by your taste buds and certainly not by your arteries. In fact, you probably won't taste the difference between foods with transfats and those without because transfats were usually added to snacks to make them cheaper to produce rather than more aesthetically pleasing.

Transfats are manufactured, meaning they do not occur naturally as you have with the type of fat you find in meat and dairy products. Ever read a package that lists as an ingredient partially hydrogenated vegetable oil? Bingo - this is a transfat, short for trans fatty acid.

Transfats are created when hydrogen gas meets oil. Specifically, a food producer takes liquid vegetable oil, the same stuff you probably have in your kitchen for basic cooking and frying, and then subjects that oil to pressure through hydrogen. The result is a firmer fat, not unlike a type of lard or the Crisco your mother used to fry chicken or make treats.

Manufacturers like transfats because it allows them to prolong the shelf life of cookies, microwave popcorn, chips, and other snack foods without much additional cost. Liquid oil, by comparison, can go bad after a shorter period of time.