When it comes to nutrition, very few pieces of dietary advice are ever clear-cut. The diet that works best for you – whether it’s high in good fats and protein or low in carbohydrates – is personal and the advice you receive from health experts should be specific to your needs.
But there’s one controversial, uncontested area that’s the exception: industrially-produced trans-fatty acids (trans fats). Universally detested as a food villain and the ultimate destroyer of our heart health, most experts agree on its evils and say that it’s bad for us.
“From a health point of view, it is just one of those things in nutrition, which is completely black and white – trans fats are bad for your heart,” Heart Foundation nutritionist and dietitian, Beth Meertens, tells SBS.
What are trans fats and why are they so bad?
Industrially-produced trans fatty acids (IPTFA) are added to foods – like baked goods, snack and take-away foods – by manufacturers to make them crispy and increase their shelf-life. But it is only one of two types of trans fats we consume in our diets. The other kind is naturally occurring and not so heavily demonised – ruminant trans fats, found in the dairy and meat products from animals that feed off the land.
“Research shows the consumption of industrially-produced trans fats have a couple of negative actions on your body,” says Meertens. “It increases your bad cholesterol (LDL cholesterol) – a biomarker for heart disease, reduces your good cholesterol (HDL cholesterol) and increases inflammation. It has a cascade effect on your body that puts you at risk of having a stroke and a heart attack or developing type 2 diabetes.”
From a health point of view, it is just one of those things in nutrition, which is completely black and white – trans fats are bad for your heart.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has also declared that if your diet is high in IPTFA, your risk of heart disease increases by 21 per cent and your risk of death, from trans fat consumption, goes up by 28 per cent. According to recent WHO figures, IPTFA have also been blamed for more than 500,000 deaths across the globe annually.
In Australia, our IPTFA consumption is not as steep but it is still killing people. A study published in 2017 identifies that trans fat contributed to almost 500 Australian deaths from heart disease in one year (2011-2012).
Last month, the WHO unveiled its new plan to eliminate the use of IPTFA in the global food supply within the next five years, placing the onus of change on governments and food manufacturers.
WHO has also recommended that the total trans fat intake in all nations be limited to less than one per cent of total energy intake, which translates to less than 2.2 g/day with a 2,000-calorie diet. People who eat dairy and meat will never totally eliminate trans fats from their diets because of the naturally occurring variety. So one per cent is seen as acceptable.
Currently, on average, trans fats make up around 0.6 per cent of the Australian diet. Does that mean no more needs to be done to eliminate IPTFA from our diets? Hardly.
Does Australia have a problem?
“From global perspective, it’s a really big issue in India and Iran as they have huge amounts of trans fats in their diet,” Meertens says. “But that doesn’t mean Australia can just sit back on the fact that we currently have a low intake and think that all is fine.
“There are still trans fats in Australia’s food supply. Our 0.6 figure is an average – some people will fall below it and others will be consuming a lot more trans fats in their diet as part of their daily routine. It’s still feasible that a lot of people are having far too much IPTFA in their diet. For example, if someone had a meat pie, a custard tart and a small bowl of microwave popcorn in one day, they would exceed WHO’s recommended daily limit of trans fats.”
Despite calls from health organisations like the Heart Foundation for the Australian government to move further on this issue, Meertens says there’s little impetus to do more to reduce the amount of IPTFA in our food supply because we are below the WHO recommended average intake and that looks as though it’s good enough. “But we need to remove the complacency that people have about it."
Our 0.6 figure is an average – some people will fall below it and others will be consuming a lot more trans fats in their diet as part of their daily routine.
The 2017 study on trans fats says that IPTFA in the Australian food supply is, in absolute terms, “still substantial”. “Policy-making to reduce [trans fats] exposure may therefore be desirable, especially as, currently, trans fatty acids levels continue to be high in some food products in Australia,” the study reads.
Spokesperson for the Dietitians Association of Australia and Accredited Practising Dietitian, Nicole Dynan, believes we need to do more as a country to eliminate IPTFA from our food supply. “It’s an industrialised man-made product that produces no benefit to us,” says Dynan. “I don’t see why we need to have it in our food supply.”
Personal improvements in our diet could eliminate trans fats on an individual level: if we don’t eat discretionary foods containing them, then there’s no problem.
“If we can swap a lot of those discretionary foods from our diet and get people eating more wholefoods and grains then they will have less trans fats in their diet,” she says. “But so far, that’s proven to be challenging.” Although it’s correct to say everyone should just stop eating biscuits, pies and microwave popcorn to avoid trans fats, strong dietary advice alone has not eliminated our sugar issue so why would it work for trans fats.
Policy-making to reduce [trans fats] exposure may therefore be desirable, especially as, currently, trans fatty acids levels continue to be high in some food products in Australia.
Dynan is one of a chorus of health experts calling for food manufacturers to eliminate it from their recipes. “If Australian margarine manufacturers were able to come up with a way to eliminate IPTFA from margarines in the 1990s, then other manufacturers should be able to eliminate it from other food products today.
“We are so clever these days with technology. Surely manufacturers can work out another way to increase the shelf-life of products without harming the health of consumers.”
Why don't we know if trans fats are in our food?
The Heart Foundation agrees but believes that the first, necessary step towards eradicating IPTFA from our food supply is to make it mandatory for manufacturers to declare the presence and quantity of trans fats in food products in the nutritional information panel on packaging.
At the moment, it’s only a voluntary requirement. Meertens says voluntary declarations means we are only getting half the story about how much trans fats are in our food, as some companies declare it and others don’t.
“Shoppers shouldn’t need a dietetics degree to work out if there are trans fats in their food. They have the right to know what they are eating and should be able to see if there are trans fats in their foods by looking at the nutritional panel on the package.”
Once upon a time, the idea of mandatory declaration had significant backing in Canberra. In 2011, a report on trans fats – commissioned by the Australian and New Zealand food regulation ministers of the time – recommended that if trans fatty acids had not been phased out of the national food supply by 2013, “mandatory declaration of all trans fatty acids above an agreed threshold be introduced in the Nutrition Information Panel”.
Shoppers shouldn’t need a dietetics degree to work out if there are trans fats in their food.
But in 2014, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) ruled on the recommendation stating that the level of IPTFA in the diet was well below the ‘at risk’ level. In 2015, government ministers accepted the advice of FSANZ that, “given the low level of TFAs in the foods sampled in Australia and New Zealand, mandatory labelling does not appear warranted”.
Even still, Heart Foundation is adamant that the recent WHO recommendations and plan to eliminate IPTFA in our food supply should encourage Australia to revisit the mandatory declaration recommendation.
Meertens says that mandatory declaration of trans fats would generate accurate data on the quantity of trans fats in our foods. That means better reporting on the issue – and perhaps a stronger evidence-backed case for a blanket ban on IPTFA in our food supply that health organisations can put to government.
“Introducing the mandatory declaration of trans fats on the nutritional panel of food packages is a constructive way to move us towards the eradication of IPTFA in our food supply. It’s the most effective way for companies to move forward. The option is now up to the government.”
