Trans fat free, but not fat free

As you've no doubt heard, New York city restaurants are being required to remove trans fats from their menus.  And plenty of others in the food and restaurant industry (like Taco Bell, KFC, and Frito Lay) are getting out in front of the issue by voluntarily removing trans fats from their products. But will a trans fat ban really make us that much healthier?  It all depends on what we replace it with.

Removing trans fats will have the biggest impact on the production of fried foods and pastry--foods which are commonly made using artificially hydrogenated oils.  These are liquid vegetable oils that are chemically altered to make them solid at room temperature. This gives both the oils and the foods made with them a longer shelf-life. But hydrogenated oils are full of trans fats. So now restaurants and food manufacturers have to figure out how to produce crisp fried foods and flaky pastries without them.

Commercial bakeries (and many home bakers as well) like to use hydrogenated vegetable shortening for things like pie crust and biscuits.  A tender, flaky texture is easier to achieve when you use a fat that stays solid at room temperature.  Under a trans fat ban, shortening has to go. Bakers can use butter instead, which will certainly taste great.  But it's more expensive and it isn't exactly health food, either. (Those trans-fat free shortenings that have come out in the last few years are made with coconut or palm oil...more about that in a minute.)

Restaurants also favor hydrogenated oils for frying because they tolerate high heat well and don't become rancid as quickly as liquid vegetable oils.  The alternatives?  Some restaurants are frying up their French fries and egg rolls in trans fat free canola or peanut oil. All well and good, as long as they change the oil much more frequently than they had to with shortening. These poly-unsaturated fats are much more heat sensitive and can quickly become rancid (which tastes bad) or oxidized (which creates free radicals in your body).

You can also fry foods in lard or other animal fats. Trend spotters may have noticed that french fries fried in duck fat have become very popular in chic eateries lately, although I doubt this has anything to do with avoiding trans fats.  Duck fat fries may be 'to die for' on a couple of levels. They're darned tasty. But replacing hydrogenated fats with saturated fats is like trading a noose for a guillotine.

Animal fats (such as the fats in meat, lard, eggs, cream, or butter) are loaded with saturated fats, which have been linked with heart disease. Those with longer memories will recall that it was the fear of saturated fats that drove us to artificially-hydrogenated fats in the first place!(Margarine is essentially shortening with artificial flavor and color added.)

Other alternatives to shortening or animal fats are vegetable oils like palm or coconut oil, which are naturally solid at room temperature.  This makes them more heat stable and helps create a texture closer to shortening or butter. The reason they are solid at room temperature? Palm and coconut oil are actually saturated fats from the vegetable kingdom.  It's a matter of controversy whether these saturated vegetable fats are guilty of the same artery-clogging tendencies as saturated fats from animal sources.

A lot of the research that implicated saturated fat as a factor in heart disease was conducted using saturated vegetable fats. Still, some claim that saturated vegetable fats like coconut oil should be let off the hook, on the grounds that their shorter chain length render them harmless or even healthful.

But here's the real bottom line. Those who fear that French fries and biscuits may be damaging to your health may be right--I'm just not sure that trans-fat free versions of these high fat foods are that much of an improvement. Whether you replace trans fats with vegetable oil, butter, coconut oil, or duck fat, foods like french fries and pie crust are still just as fat and calorie-laden. Remember how many people gained serious weight eating those fat-free (but sugar-laden) Snackwell's cookies?  Will people see a trans-fat free French fry as a license to super-size their orders?  I sure hope not.

To see how your favorite foods stack up in terms of fat, calories, trans fats, and just about everything else, use Nutrition Data's powerful search tools.