"Trans fat" panic spreads to Australia

The consumption of popular brands of croissants, sandwich spreads and pastry goods can increase the chance of developing coronary heart disease by more than 20 per cent, research shows. But unlike many other developed countries, legislation in Australia does not even require manufacturers to disclose the presence of the offending ingredient on the foods' packaging. Clinical trials conducted by two researchers at Oxford University found that an increase of as little as 2 per cent in the consumption of common foods containing trans fatty acids can lead to a 23 per cent increase in coronary heart disease.

The research published recently in the British Medical Journal adds weight to arguments by an increasing number of nutrition experts that there is no safe level of trans fats consumption. Trans fats are added to most fast foods, and to a range of baked supermarket goods, confectionary and sandwich spreads, to improve taste, texture and shelf life. While trans fats occur naturally in small amounts in dairy products and meat, artificially produced trans fats are manufactured in large quantities by a process called partial hydrogenation.

A review of the Foods Standards Code in Australia last year concluded that saturated fat intake here was of more concern than trans fats, so the labelling of trans fat was only necessary if the product made a nutritional claim such as being low in fat or cholesterol. A spokeswoman for Food Standards Australia New Zealand said yesterday the revised code was now being reviewed again, and the statutory agency was in the final stages of collecting data on the prevalence of trans fatty acids in locally produced food. "But anecdotal evidence suggests there is less reliance here on soy and corn oil [which have a high trans fat content] than overseas," she said. "We tend to use canola more."

However, an analysis last year by the Australian Consumers Association's Choice magazine showed 18 common foods - including Nutella, some shortcrust pastries, party pies, pasties and sausage rolls, and supermarket-baked croissants - had dangerously high levels of trans fats, some even higher than a McDonald's burger and fries. Professor Garry Jennings, the director of the Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne, said trans fats should be identified on the label, if not removed completely. "There is no doubt that trans fats cause coronary disease and their presence in diet is unnecessary," he said. "It certainly seems that there would be no downside to eliminating them from our diet completely." Barbara Eden, the national nutrition manager for the Heart Foundation, said there was a strong case that trans fats were far more harmful than saturated fats.

Source. Note: The medical article concerned appears to be "Trans fatty acids and cororonary heart disease" by Robert Clarke and Sarah Lewington of Oxford University, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on 29 July 2006. Judging by the publicly available portion of it, it is in fact policy advocacy rather than a report of new research. See here for the other side of the story. It should be noted that the BMJ is notorious for its Leftist political biases and all the disregard for the full facts of the matter which that implies