Watch out for trans fats and saturated fats in your daily meals -CHOICE # 372

Food manufacturers are urged to reduce the trans fats in their products.

The appeal was issued by the Consumer Council in a test report in collaboration with the Centre for Food Safety.

The test covered a wide array of bakery products of different types: 23 breads, 14 cakes, 7 egg tarts, 3 chicken pies, and 11 batter-made food (egg rolls, waffles, egg puffs).

Included in the test were also 14 fried foods (French fries, potato cut fries, fried chicken, fried pork chop, fried fritters and deep-fried pastries), and 8 butter and margarine/margarine-like products.

The test, on altogether 80 food products, reflects the rising public concern over the presence of trans fats in many of our daily snacks and meals.

The revelation of the test offers little reassurance for letting our guard down. It does, however, point the way for consumers to avoid or to cut down on those items that are rich in trans fats.

Trans fats have been linked to increased risk of coronary heart disease with growing evidence and are considered to be worse than saturated fats that we are more familiar with.

The concern is trans fats will not only raise the level of low-density lipoprotein (LDL or bad cholesterol) in the blood, like saturated fats, but will also lower the level of high-density lipoprotein (HDL or good cholesterol).

The test revealed that some of our sampled foods contained high level of trans fats, for example, the cream-filled breads with shredded coconut(椰絲奶油包 ), which are a local favourite.

In two samples of this kind, they were found to contain about 1.3g and 1.5g of trans fats in each (weighing 95g and 83g) respectively.

That means the mere consumption of a single cream-filled, shredded-coconut bread will contribute to some 60% to 70% of the WHO/FAO recommended daily intake of trans fats (for a person with a daily energy intake of 2,000 Calories), let alone the trans fats that one will consume in other foods.

Frequent consumption of this food could lead to an intake of trans fats in excess of the recommended limits.

According to WHO/FAO recommendation, the intake of trans fats should be less than 1% of daily energy intake, i.e. for a 2,000 Calorie diet, the daily intake of trans fats should be less than 2.2g.

On the whole, the test found trans fats in the bread sample category to range from zero to 1.8g/100g. So, there is actually plenty of choices for the consumers to select carefully and wisely in the interest of cardiovascular health.

It also clearly implies that it is possible for food manufacturers to reduce trans fats in their products.

The same wide variation in trans fats was found in other groups of samples: egg tarts and chicken pies (0.12g to 0.82g/100g), and fried foods (0.034g to 2.4g/100g).

In addition, the test examined 7 margarine/margarine-like samples and found their trans fats contents to vary substantially from 0.12g to 4.2g/100g.

This gives rise to the concern that manufacturers may have used an industrially-produced hydrogenated vegetable oil (in order to change from its natural liquid form to semi-solid or solid form and to increase its shelf life), which in turn produces trans fats in the food product.

Food manufacturers are urged to refrain from using hydrogenated vegetable oil for their food products and, further, to label precisely if the products contain such ingredients like vegetable shortening or margarine.

Currently in Hong Kong, there is no legislative requirement for the labelling of trans fats content of prepackaged food products for consumer information.

Given the growing public attention on trans fats in food, some products have voluntarily put out "no trans fats" claim. Consumers should, however, be mindful that other cardiovascular-disease-causing ingredients in these products may not be necessarily also at a low level.

Also examined in the test was the trans fats content of butter - since trans fats occur naturally in milk products. The one butter sample included in the test contained 3.5g/100g trans fats, which was found to be within the range of general butter product specification according to international data.

Generally, the consumption of butter or margarine products is comparatively lower than other food. But consumers will do well to watch the actual amount they consume to avoid excessive trans fats intake.

Among the 80 test products, 39 were prepackaged products, in which 7 samples (2 cakes, 1 butter and 4 margarine-like products) were labelled with trans fats contents on their packages.

The two cake samples labelled to contain 0 trans fats per serving, were detected with trans fats content of 0.11g/100g and 0.19g/100g respectively. The discrepancy may be due to the fact that in the US, the trans fats content may be expressed as 0g if the product contains less than 0.5g trans fats per serving.

For the butter and margarine-like samples, all but one were found to actually contain less trans fats than their own claims - by 17% to 72%.

As part of the trans fats test, the samples were also examined for their contents of saturated fats, another risk factor for heart disease.

In general, some of the fried foods were found to contain quite a high level of saturated fats. For example, for one potato cut fries and two fried chicken samples, the consumption of a single portion of these samples may already contribute to 60% to 70% of the WHO/FAO daily intake recommendation on saturated fats (for a person with a daily energy intake of 2,000 Calories).

Consumers are advised to consult the findings of the test for details in this October issue of CHOICE.