The politics of fat are complicated, but with the recent attention in newspapers to “Ban the trans” I couldn’t keep out of it.

I have never been comfortable with government intervention. I come by this discomfort honestly; you should have heard my dad when the seat belt law was enacted. It was worse than when we went metric.

In the usual course of things, when a food additive or ingredients is considered unhealthy to the point that it can be directly linked to specific diseases such as heart, stroke, or cancer, it is either pulled from the market by Health Canada and our other health watchdogs, or if it is a concern in a less direct way, it is added to the ever-lengthening nutrition label on prepared foods. Generally, it does not become the parliamentary issue that the current fat has.

Animal fats—butter, lard— taste good. They give foods a lovely texture and they make fried foods crispy, but they are saturated and by now, everyone knows that this is a bad thing. We conscientiously look for labels listing the smaller amount of saturated fats. The tropical oils, palm and coconut, are also saturated. We read the ingredients to see if these are included. We have been well-trained.

Since the time we became aware of “good fats” and “bad fats” we have been seeking ways to eat our cake and stay healthy too. We are a stubborn lot. In order to provide us with the taboo, saturated-oil experience, food manufacturers began to use hydrogenated “good oils” in fried foods, baked goods, and many processed foods. Monounsaturated (olive, peanut, canola) and Polyunsaturated (safflower, corn, soybean) oils remain liquid at room temperature. By changing their structure with the addition of hydrogen, they form something that is spreadable, i.e. margarine.

That seemed perfect. We could avoid saturated fats and still make pies.

And then someone, probably from the dairy industry back when the war was raging between butter and margarine, discovered that hydrogenated fats might be worse for us than saturated fats because they now contained trans fats.  Not only do trans fats raise the bad cholesterol, but they lower the good. Trans fats are found naturally in meats and dairy, however, the concern is with our high use of hydrogenated vegetable oils such as margarine and vegetable shortening in commercial food processing.

So now, do we go back to saturated fats, stick with hydrogenated, or simply stop eating anything with fats at all!

The canola people are loving it. With their technology, they can create almost any “Franken” oil. They are already stepping up to the plate with better oils to deep-fry with. Regular canola is not stable at high temperatures. Anyone reading the side of a Spectrum canola bottle will note that Kelvin says to use canola only for light sautéing and baking. It also says to store it in the fridge. Oils that decompose easily, usually when they are heated above their smoke point —olive oil is one to watch—can produce trans fats as well as free-radicals that can cause cancer. Canola producers have created some sort of super-canola that can withstand high heats for this reason. Many fast food places and restaurants have switched over to these preferred oils. There are also unsaturated oils like peanut that can sustain high frying temperatures.

Other food processors have switched to non-hydrogenated liquid oils when possible, but in many applications, this is not so simple. Pie crusts are a perfect example. Some form of margarine or non-liquid shortening is needed. The baking industry is already looking for a substitute, short of a return to saturated animal fats.

Becel margarine has produced a non-trans margarine by increasing the saturated fats somewhat, still within healthy limits. Although their product lists “0” trans fat, there is still trace due to processing. In Canada, less than 0.2g of trans fat per serving is considered trace. The ban-the-trans people would like to see it less than 2% total fat in margarines and less than 5% total fat for all other foods.

The food industry is making changes. The public has been made aware of the health aspects of trans fats and will likely continue to hear about it ad nauseam. Whenever you suddenly find that a favourite soup or cracker has disappeared off the shelf, it has likely been pulled for re-labelling or a tune-up of its ingredients. With labelling regulations, it would be marketing suicide to try to sell a cookie with 5g of trans next to one that is trans free.

Most health spokespeople say that the easiest way to avoid trans fats is to follow the same rule followed for saturated fats: reduce fat in your diet; eat more fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; eat less processed foods; don’t eat deep-fried foods, ever. One spokesperson for the food service industry said that because the restaurant business is customer-directed, changes will be made simply due to customer demand. 

The bottom-line for me is that when we switched to margarine 30 years ago, we did it without a law. In another 5 or 10 years, is there going to be a new set of data that tells us that the newest fats are bad for us, and we will be going through the whole change again?

And where are these new fats coming from? Don’t imagine that a little, old monk is running around with his forceps, cross-pollinating canola plants. Those ugly letters, GMO, are likely to show up somewhere. But that is another controversial topic for another day.

The seat-belt law was a good law; it protected everyone. But this is the same government who, despite undeniable evidence, cannot ban the sale of cigarettes. What we want from our governing bodies is up-to-date information and labelling regulations so that we can make our own informed choices.

This makes me think of one neighbourhood in Calgary. They fought with (and won) city council to have their streets closed to vehicular traffic to make it safer for their children. Rather than teach their children to be street-smart, they got rid of the cars. Someday, those kids are going to be on another street without a ban.