What foods have the most transfats?

Question

I saw an article saying that partially hydrogenated oil was basicly pure transfats. But then I looked on a margerine ingrediant list and it said it was made with partially hydrogenated oil but showed no transfats in its ingrediants. What can I believe?

Answer 1

You are correct that trans fats come from hydrogenated oils which are prevalent in many foods. It is only in foods that have hydrogenated oils in them that you will find trans-fats. So basically be weary of just about anything fried. However, by law, the food industry can state that products have no tras fat, or any fat for that matter, so long as the amount is less than 1/2 of 1 gram. What is really amazing, is if you look at the label on the Pam no stick cooking spray, is indicates that there is no fat, when if fact it is comprised entirely of fat. They can do this because the serving sizes are so small that there is less than 1/2 of 1 gram of fat per serving. These practices really need to be changed because they can be very misleading even to an informed consumer.

Answer 2

If you're strictly looking food products with "transfat" on the nutrition labels, I've found that most vending machine products have transfat in them, about 4+ grams.
However, like everyone else said, hydrogenated/ partially hydrogenated oil turns out to be in the same category. And that is in practically every packaged product out there.

Answer 3

Partially hydrogenated oils ARE trans fats. It is a process that makes otherwise unsaturated fats (which are liquid at room temperature) and adding hydrogens to their chains to make them more saturated (saturated just means having the maximum amount of hydrogen atoms on the fatty acid chain... with no double-bonded carbons). Making the fats more saturated, allows them to pack in together more and so they become solid at room temperature. This allows margarine (soybean oil) to be solid at room temperature. But... in the process, the fat doesn't resemble a normal saturated fat... and because it is partially saturated (hydrogenated) it takes on a trans formation, which refers to how the atoms are spatially related to each other around a double-bonded carbon. Anyway... our bodies don't understand trans-fats, they are unnatural and apparently have harmful effects on our bodies.

I recently noticed that some foods that have partially-hydrogenated oils in the ingredients have "NO TRANS FATS" labels. This is because the FDA only requires that foods containing more than .5% trans fats label that they have it.

Don't trust the labels, just read the ingredients and be confident that you know what trans fats are.

Answer 4

That is weird, it's like they are one in the same. I heard they are trying to ban the use of it (trans fat) in New York. I think that McDonalds did or still does use it to cook their fries...