True or false: If the average American eliminated cakes, cookies, and pies from their diet they would no longer be eating trans fats.
Answer: False. According to the Food & Drug Administration (FDA)'s economic analysis for the final trans fatty acid labeling rule, the above-mentioned foods represent about 40 percent of the main sources of trans fats for American adults. If you also eliminate bread, animal products, margarine, fried potatoes, potato chips, corn chips, and popcorn from your diet, you've effectively removed 95 percent of the trans fats. Trans fat is found in vegetable shortening, some margarines, and foods made with or fried in partially hydrogenated oils.
True or False: Eating trans fats can lead to an increase in abdominal fat.
Answer: True. According to a recent animal study conducted at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, there's a direct relationship between eating trans fats and an increase in abdominal fat. High levels of abdominal fat, sometimes referred to as an "apple" shaped body, are associated with higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, and breast cancer, among other things.
In the study, male monkeys who were fed a western-style diet for 6 years had a 7.2 percent increase in body weight compared to monkeys fed a diet with monosaturated fats, such as olive oil. In the fat monkeys, all the extra weight ended up in the abdomen. Even more striking, however, was the fact that both groups of monkeys were fed the same number of daily calories. This led Kylie Kavanagh, DVM, one of the Wake Forest University researchers, to conclude in a prepared statement that "in equivalent diets, trans fatty acid consumption increases weight gain."
True or false: Trans fats are now banned in many major cities.
Answer: False. New York City banned trans fats in its restaurants on December 5, 2006, but it was the first-and to date, the only-large city to do so. The ban gives restaurants 18 months to phase out trans fats and instead switch to oils, margarines and shortening used for frying and spreading that have less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving, according to information from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The ban is designed, at least in part, to help reduce death rates from coronary heart disease: in 2004, 23,000 New York City residents died from heart disease and nearly one-third of these individuals died before the age of 75, according to the NYC Board of Health. Several other cities are considering bans, including Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
True or false: Trans fats have been linked with increased risk of at least two female-specific diseases: breast cancer
and infertility.
Answer: True. Trans fats aren't healthy for anyone, but recent studies show that they may be especially dangerous for women's reproductive organs.
One recent study, which was detailed in the March 21, 2007 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that postmenopausal women whose daily diet included 40 percent fat had about a 15 percent increased risk of developing breast cancer compared with women got 20 percent of their calories from fat. In the study, which examined data from more than 185,000 women, researchers concluded that "dietary fat intake was directly associated with the risk of postmenopausal invasive breast cancer."
In a separate study, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health who analyzed data from more than 18,500 premenopausal women found that the more trans fats a woman eats, the more likely she is to be infertile. According to the researchers, whose results were published in the January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, "each 2 percent increase in the intake of trans fats, as opposed to that from carbohydrates, was associated with a 73 percent greater risk of ovulatory infertility."
Other studies have linked consumption of trans fats with increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
Life & Health Newsletter
Sign up for your FREE subscription for helpful information on how to manage your bladder control problems.
You also get lifestyle information, healthy living tips and expert Q&A to help you live life to the fullest.
