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Trans Ban
by author Erin Whalen

Last fall, NDP leader Jack Layton introduced a motion in Parliament that called on the federal government to present a Bill to eliminate trans fat from food sold in Canada. The motion passed 193 to 73, paving the way for Canada to become the second country ever to ban the harmful substance.

Trans fats are a known contributor to cardiovascular disease. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, there is no known safe level of trans fat consumption.

Denmark’s success in March 2003 imposing a two percent upper limit of total fat for trans fats in processed foods encouraged the NDP party to introduce the anti-trans fat motion. “The experience in Denmark has shown us that this is viable, that you can implement this kind of ban,” Layton said in an interview with alive magazine.

Soon after the motion passed Canada’s Parliament–in November 2004–Health Canada established a multi-stakeholder task force to explore healthy alternatives to trans fat and to determine how best to make the transition from trans fat to other oils with the least possible impact on the country’s food industry. The task force will make its final recommendations to the Minister of Health this November.

So, What Exactly is Trans Fat?

Trans fats, also known as trans fatty acids, are created when a liquid vegetable oil is chemically treated with hydrogen to turn it into a solid and give it a longer shelf life. Trans fats are sometimes listed as vegetable oil shortening or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil on ingredient lists.

They’re everywhere. Trans fats can be found in about 40 percent of the products on our grocery store shelves, from potato chips and frozen waffles to processed peanut butter. They’re even found in seemingly healthy food choices such as granola bars and bran flake cereals with raisins.

The amount of trans fat in some of the foods Canadians eat is alarmingly high. One popular brand of microwavable buttered popcorn has over five grams of trans fat per serving. A frozen fish fillet has over 2.5 grams of trans fat per serving. Even bran muffins sold at a popular national coffee chain were found to contain half a gram of trans fat! This is not good news for Canadian consumers.

Why are Trans Fats so Dangerous?

When trans fat use first became widespread between the 1950s and the 1980s as an alternative to animal fats, no one had any reason to suspect that it was any more dangerous than any other fats on the market. However, in the 1990s, research began to show that when vegetable fat is turned into a solid, it raises low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol levels. It also lowers the level of “good” cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), which cleanses the circulatory system and protects against cardiovascular disease.

The Harvard University’s Nurse’s Health Study of 85,000 US women found a 53-percent increase in risk of heart disease in those who ate the most trans fats compared with those who ate the least. Similarly, a study published in 1997 by the New England Journal of Medicine claimed that eating just one gram of trans fat a day increased a person’s chance of developing cardiovascular disease by 20 percent.

Yet here in Canada, the average consumer eats about eight to 10 grams a day–one of the highest consumption levels in the world.

As long-time readers will know, alive has been reporting on the dangers of trans fats for years. Siegfried Gursche, founder of the magazine, calls trans fats “the single most dangerous ingredient in our food.” His concern about trans fats compelled him to print numerous of articles about them–including an article published in 1975, in one of the magazine’s very first issues.

“Trans fats are so heavily processed, they aren’t even food any more. They’re like plastic,” he says. “The molecular structure of the oil is so damaged by hydrogenation that the liver doesn’t even recognize it as food. It can’t digest trans fats and tries to flush them out of our system by producing more cholesterol. That’s where our high cholesterol levels come from.”

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Erin Whalen is a freelance writer based in Vancouver, BC.

Source: alive #270, April 2005

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