6 Foods That Still Have Scary Amounts of Trans Fats

<a href="http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/assortment-of-cupcakes-14590495?st=f844d2b">The Crimson Monkey</a>/iStock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


After years of hemming and hawing, the Food and Drug Administration has finally declared artificial trans fats a threat to public health, giving food companies until June 2018 to phase out partially hydrogenated oils, the primary source of trans fats in processed foods.

The decision doesn’t amount to a full ban, allowing companies to petition for small amounts of trans fats if they can present evidence that it won’t cause harm to consumers. But the FDA cautions that food companies will be hard-pressed to find research that contests the negative health effects of trans fats, which it says contribute to as many as 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each year.

The restrictions make good on a tentative decision in 2013 that sent food companies scrambling to reformulate products from coffee creamers to frozen pizzas. Local governments, however, were reacting to health research well before then: New York City passed a ban in 2006, followed by California in 2008, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that about 20 percent of Americans already live in an area where local law restricts the use of trans fats. Since 2003, trans fat consumption in America has decreased by about 80 percent, the FDA says, which has contributed to a steep drop in cholesterol rates in children.

Originally seen as an alternative to saturated fat, trans fat gained popularity in the 1940s and still has many uses in the modern food industry, maintaining the vibrancy of sprinkles and the buttery flakiness of biscuits. Since 2006, companies have been required to include trans fats on dietary labels. Here are a few products where it still pays to check the packaging:

  • Canned frosting
  • Savory snacks (including crackers and microwave popcorn)
  • Packaged pie
  • Frozen pizza
  • Margarine
  • Coffee creamer

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the primary trade group for the food industry, said in a statement that the three-year time frame is long enough to reformulate those products “without disruption of commerce.” But the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has for years lobbied for a ban on trans fats and today lauded the FDA decision, also authored a blistering report in 2005 on palm oil, which is favored as a cheap alternative to partially hydrogenated oils. In addition to palm oil’s high concentration of artery-clogging saturated fats, the center cautioned that added demand would compound an ecological crisis in Indonesia and Malaysia, where the expansion of palm oil plantations has devastated forests and endangered wildlife.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate