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Trans fat ban way passed its due date

Buyer beware — we don't even regulate this toxin!
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Health experts consider them to be a poison; a toxin unsafe in any amount.

The U.S. estimates they are responsible for 7,000 deaths and 20,000 heart attacks every year.

According to an article by dietician Leslie Beck in The Globe and Mail, experts have estimated that in Canada a policy as simple as regulating heart-clogging trans fats "would avert more than 12,000 heart attacks and save $250–$450 million in health care spending each year over the next 20 years."

Trans fats are bad, bad, bad for us — bad for our health, bad for our economy, bad for our wellbeing. We've known this for years, yet they still have not been banned in Canada.

"There is no clearer dietary link to coronary artery disease than the ingestion of trans fats," says obesity expert, Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, by phone from Ottawa. He's a family doctor, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa, and founder of Ottawa's Bariatric Medical Institute — an ethical, evidence-based nutrition and weight management centre.

"(Trans fats) are referred to by the head of the Canadian Trans Fat Task Force as a toxin that's unsafe in any amount, and I would certainly concur with that description of them," he says.

"More importantly, though, they are totally unnecessary to include in our diets. There are alternatives to trans fats that do not carry the same risks and, as a consequence, the only rationale for not taking them out of the food supply is lack of political will."

Unfortunately, trans fats are not even regulated in Canada. This after Health Canada's own Trans Fat Task Force recommended that that be done way back in 2007.

The task force recommendation for regulation is the same one described in The Globe and Mail as able to save millions of dollars in health care costs and thousands of Canadians from heart attacks each year: Trans fat content of vegetable oils and soft, spreadable margarines should be limited to two per cent of the total fat content. The trans fat content for all other foods should be restricted to five per cent of the total fat content, including ingredients sold to restaurants.

Instead, we rely on industry to voluntarily control their use of trans fats, which are found primarily in processed and fast foods. The Conservatives should be more chagrined by this flimflam approach than they are by Rob Ford!

Now the U.S. has joined Denmark, the first country in the world to ban trans fats, although no specific time frame has been designated.

To phase them out, the FDA determined that trans fats no longer fall in the agency's "generally recognized as safe" category and will remove them from a list used for thousands of additives manufacturers can add to foods without FDA review. Once trans fats are off the list, anyone wanting to use them would have to petition the FDA for a regulation allowing it, which would not likely be approved.

Here, we can only shake our heads in disbelief that Health Canada has not already banned them, or at least followed it's own task force's two per cent / five per cent recommendation. This is doubly true given it took lightning-quick action to get BPA out of plastic baby bottles a couple of years back with far shakier evidence about BPA's dangers than we have for trans fats. But then there's no huge baby bottle industry banging on Ottawa's doors.

Given Canada was one of the first countries to require mandatory labelling for trans fats — although, buyer beware, a small amount of trans fats can be in the product and the manufacturer can still declare "zero" on the label — this is political laziness and kowtowing to the food industry, plain and simple.

Manufacturers can be a powerful lobby group and argue all kinds of excuses like cost efficiencies for continued trans fat use. But, as Dr. Freedhoff points out, "If (Denmark) is able to make Danishes without trans fats then certainly we can make doughnuts without trans fats."

What can you do in the meantime? Besides lobbying your MP to ban trans fats and get with the program for more factual food product labels, it's up to you to protect yourself.

"Trans fats are definitely not healthy," says Squamish resident and bestselling author of The Power of Food, Adam Hart. Instead, look for healthy, plant-based fats like those found in vegetable oils such as olive, sunflower, and grape seed; whole grains like flax and hemp seed; and nuts, especially walnuts.

"In the end we can rely on the government to start banning things, or we can do it ourselves and take ownership of our own health."

SIDEBAR:YOUR HANDY TRANS FAT 101 PRIMER

Trans fats, which, for the most part are made artificially, are fats that are solid at room temperature. In one of the worst possible uses of hydrogen, they are manufactured by adding it to vegetable oil to make it more solid. Ergo the alternative name for trans fat: partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

The process of hydrogenation dates back to the 1890s. A product like Crisco, for instance, is primarily made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil. Crisco, by the way, was intended to replace lard, a natural fat used for years.

Trans fats are used in product manufacturing to increase the shelf life and stability of various processed foods as well as oils that are cheap to use in frying, so they often turn up in commercial baked goods and fast food outlets. Some food product manufacturers also claim they improve texture and flavour but, like salt in so many cultures, that's entirely a matter of taste.

A type of trans fat occurs naturally in milk and in the body fat of ruminants like cattle and sheep at a level of two to five per cent body fat — the same ratio our Canadian task force landed on for regulating trans fats in our food supply.

Besides being directly linked to coronary heart disease, trans fats are also implicated in other health issues, including Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, liver function and major depressive disease.

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning journalist who steers way wide of trans fats, and recommends Yoni Freedhoff's blog, Weighty Matters.