Be careful of trans fats this festive season

This is the time of the year when we eat trans fats the most. Because it's the festive season - Navratris, Dusshera, then Diwali, and after that, Christmas in December, and of course the biggest festival of all - the New Year. So this artery-clogging fat is just there, in our face all the time... Plus winter is round the corner and there is nothing like a drop in temperature to whet our appetite for sweets and let loose cravings for fried food (pakoras, namkeens, imarati, gulab jamuns... get the drift...). So "this" is the time to keep an eye out for this meanest of all fats.

Yes, this is so mean that arguably the worst eaters (healthwise), the Americans too are now wisening up to it and taking strong steps to curb it. In June the USFDA (US Food and Drug Administration) gave the food industry three years to eliminate trans fats from the food supply. They have set a 2018 deadline to rid foods of this fat. The agency estimates that this could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths from heart disease each year in the US alone. Yes, that's how deadly and far-reaching the effects of trans fats can be.

But why are they so dangerous?

There is clear-cut evidence that trans fats increase "bad" LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, and reduce "good" HDL cholesterol (a double whammy for our heart), and also trigger cancer, diabetes, immune dysfunction, obesity and reproductive problems. In fact researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston have reported that replacing trans fats in the diet with polyunsaturated fats (such as vegetable oils) can help reduce the risk of diabetes by as much as 40 per cent. That's a big number! Then there was another study presented by researchers of the University of California San Diego School of Medicine at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014 that linked consumption of higher amounts of dietary trans fatty acids with poorer memory in young men. Now that's scary! Besides, owing to their particular chemical structure, our body finds it hard to metabolise them, so they sit on the fat tissues around the body and actually hinder our body's working efficiency. These artery-clogging fats are in fact far more menacing than the much-rapped saturated fats, and yet they are there almost everywhere.

Where are they lurking?

Some trace amounts are found in dairy and red meats, but according to some reports, these are not harmful for health. Artificial trans fats that are formed when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it solid at room temperature and increase it's shelf life are the dangerous kinds. I recall reading the report of a laboratory test conducted by the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in 2007 on seven vanaspati brands, 21 different brands of vegetable oils (soybean, sunflower, groundnut, mustard, coconut, olive, sesame and palm), desi ghee and butter available in Indian markets. It reported that trans fat levels were five to 12 times higher than the world's recommended standards in all the vanaspati brands.

Also read: How to detox your body before the festive season

Trans fats are also found abundantly in cookies, crackers, cake icing, potato, corn and tortilla chips, many types of packaged or microwave popcorn, doughnuts, baked goods, margarines, and other processed foods, and of course, all fried food - samosas, pakoras, kachoris, french fries, doughnuts and fried chicken, and even sweets like imarati, jalebi can contain trans fats owing to the fact that they are fried in partially hydrogetated oil used in the cooking process.

Be careful

So go easy on fried foods, look carefully at which oil you are using to cook your food in, and avoid fried street food. Also read the labels carefully. According to the latest Indian recommendations, trans fats in oil should not exceed two per cent (In US they should be below 0.5 per cent, and now they are trying to remove that too). By the way, another name for trans fats is "partially hydrogenated oils".

Festive season or otherwise, it is important to ask ourselves just how important taste is (more than our heart's health and our memory), because while the food industry loves trans fats, our heart and blood vessels don't. Remember they increase the shelf life of foods, but might end up reducing ours.