Posted on 01/20/2005 3:14:50 AM PST by freepatriot32
WOODMERE, Ohio - The nation's food companies are stirring up new recipes for everything from Oreos to SpaghettiOs to get rid of trans fat, the artery-clogging ingredient that must be listed on food labels next year.
The companies say they're promoting good health, but they're also looking ahead to the new federal rule and new dietary guidelines urging consumers away from trans fats.
Trans fats have been in the nation's food supply for decades, giving products a long shelf life and making goodies like chips and cookies oh so yummy.
They are formed when liquid oils turn into solid fats and they are generally listed on foods as partially hydrogenated oils. Grab a bag of cookies from the snack food aisle and chances are trans fats are there.
But maybe not for long. The Food and Drug Administration is ordering trans fats to be listed on food labels by January 2006. The FDA says trans fat, like saturated fat, increases the risk of heart disease.
A few years ago, Sarit Zamir was like many consumers - clueless about the subject.
"I used to eat junk food a few years ago. We just didn't know," said the 32-year-old mother of three.
Now, Zamir goes out of her way to shop at a store that promises 100 percent trans fat-free foods. She says that since making the change in her family's diet, she's noticed a difference in her children's health, behavior and ability to get a good night's sleep.
"I don't touch trans fat at all," she said, her cart filled with soy milk, cage-free eggs and pure rice bran.
It took several years for the Wild Oats Natural Marketplace where Zamir shops to remove all the trans fat from its shelves, said Mandi Kelley, marketing coordinator of the store in tiny Woodmere Village outside of Cleveland.
"There were a lot of companies we had to coax into changing their ingredients," she said.
Eliminating trans fat isn't as simple as removing partially hydrogenated oils and substituting another oil - not if you want to keep the flavor.
"It takes smart engineering, smart chemistry," said James Chung, president of Reach Advisors Inc., a Boston-based marketing strategy and research firm.
"There's a reason why consumers like partially hydrogenated oils. Let's face it - fat tastes good."
Still, Chung expects to see mainstream companies gain market share with trans fat-free products, up until the point that most have removed it.
Campbell Soup has revised some products and is working on a few more, including some varieties of Chunky soup and SpaghettiOs with meatballs.
"Our goal is to remove the trans fat without impacting the taste because we have products that people have been enjoying for years and years," spokeswoman Juli Mandel Sloves said.
Campbell's owns Pepperidge Farm, which met its goal of having zero grams trans fat in its entire line of Goldfish crackers by December, Mandel Sloves said. Pepperidge Farm is turning its attention to other products, especially cookies.
The J.M. Smucker Co. introduced a version of Crisco with zero grams trans fat last April. The new product comes in a green tub - a color consumers equate with being healthy. Smucker's spokeswoman Maribeth Badertscher said the product has been doing well.
Gorton Inc. announced it had removed trans fats from all 56 of its frozen seafood products.
Kraft Foods Inc. has removed trans fats from Triscuits and Oreos and is now working on other cookies and crackers, spokeswoman Nancy Daigler said.
The company wants to make sure that when eliminating trans fat, the new product's combined total of trans or saturated fats is lower than the original.
In some cases, like Triscuit, the removal of trans fat isn't noticeable. But in others it is, like the trans fat-free Oreo, which has a different texture and taste compared with the creamy, crispy original.
Frito-Lay began working to eliminate trans fat in 2002 and completed a conversion to corn oil for Tostitos, Doritos and Cheetos a year later. Frito-Lay was a trans fat trendsetter, Chung said, but the message got lost in the Atkins diet craze.
Trans fat could become the new carbohydrate as far as consumer avoidance, but Chung doesn't expect the mania that Atkins inspired.
For Wild Oats shopper Tim Hemry, trans fat isn't at the forefront of his thoughts. But the 53-year-old's family avoids it by staying away from prepackaged food.
"We want good-for-you food," Hemry said. "The hydrogenated oil is no good for you. Our rule is as close to God made it in the first place."
"When 10:30 rolls around im going to go to burger king and order a bacon double cheeseburger with extra bacon and a couple of extra slices of cheese just to counteract the effects o f reading this story :-)"
Amd there's probably no trans-fat in there, save maybe a drop in the bun.
"This trans-fat craze is just a fad that will pass. Reasearch shows that we actually need some in our diet, especially kids during their growing years. Everything in moderation is still the best diet."
You're confusing trans-fats (hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils) with saturated fat.
Trans-fats are a manmade invention, they are solid at 98.6 degrees - which is why they clog your arteries.
"How about Skippy peanutbutter? It's got partially hydrogenated Veggy oils....I guess i should curve my use of this deadly food. hehehe"
They make peanut butter like you find in the grocery store by removing the fat from it, hydrogenating the fat, then putting it back in. They do this so that the fat in PB won't separate out at room temperature.
My grandmother used to refrigerate her natural peanut butter to keep the fat from separating out. That is a better alternative, methinks.
The amount of PHVO in "regular" peanut butters is very, very, small.
Hydrogenating vegatable oils is truly some sort of mad scientist invention. The fats we consume are hydrocarbon chains (like petroleum) expcept that they are attached to a another common molucule (can't remember this without my chemistry book, maybe glycol). The unsaturated oils are the ones that are missing hydrogens on the hydrocarbon chains, and saturated oils are the ones that have all the hydrogens you would expect to see on a normal hydrocarbon chain. So here is the mad scientists solution - bubble hydrogen through an unsaturated vegetable oil so that you end up with a saturated oil that is solid at room temperature like a saturated fat. Pretty stupid, but what is worse, these new hydrogens don't simply fill in the holes in an unsaturated fat, they stack up on each other, creating something that is rarely found in natural food that people eat. Should we be surprised to find that this stuff is bad for lots of people? I am all for better living through chemistry, but this is one clear example where people have not been given the whole truth and government was too stupid to step in and tell the mad scientists and profits-uber-alles crowd to head back to the drawing board.
Really? I thought it was a significant portion of the re-formulated oil.
Have you got any documentation on that?
"The amount of PHVO in "regular" peanut butters is very, very, small."
I looked it up.
You are quite correct.
Amazing what you learn on FR.
"I've started buying Eggland's Best eggs. No additives or hormones in the feed. They have a better taste than regular eggs."
Excellent egg ping.
Thanks. I guess it has a longer shelf life in our arteries too!
Exactly. Our bodies have as hard of a time digesting trans fat as do bacteria. Its probably like trying to digest plastic.
I just bought a Saltines brand cracker without trans fat. It was in a green and white box. It doesn't taste great (is very dry) but goes just fine with soup and such.
According to http://www.jif.com/sitewide/faq.asp most peanut butters will be listed as having zero trans fats the amount is so small.
Also see http://www.peanutbutterlovers.com/nutrition/transfats.html.
Man, I could go for some peanut butter right now.
If you have a Safeway or Giant near you, you might like to try their own natural brand of peanut butter. The ingredients are: peanuts and salt.
They are really, really cheap, too. I save a lot of money on their brand over other natural brands. They are even cheaper than regular peanut butter at the Safeway.
The fat on that hog isn't trans-fat. Lard and butter aren't trans-fat. We use butter, not margarine. I haven't had a stick of maragarine in the house for years. Nothing but butter for us.
Smuckers has a natural one with no partially hydrogenated oils. It isn't easy like the "spreadable" ones, but I eat a bit of it. Don't eat much peanut butter anyway. I burned myself out on peanut butter and bananas on toast after having it just about every morning for years.
Thank you all for your pings. I'm glad that skippy doesn't have too much of that fatty stuff.
One out of three ain't bad. The eggs are good for you. The bran is useless, the soy is harmful. (Google-search "Soy Alert" sometime.)
BTTT
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