Trans Fats - CHOICE # 364

Consumers are facing a rising health concern over trans fats which can be commonly found in bread and biscuits.

Latest studies have shown that trans fats may increase your risk of heart disease if you eat them regularly.

The Consumer Council has compiled a report on trans fats to alert the public to this rising health concern.

Apart from the naturally low levels of trans fats found in meat and dairy products, the major source of trans fats is from processed foods containing partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

Partially hydrogenated oils are a key component of margarines, shortenings, frying oils, baked and deep-fried food products, confectioneries, and many processed snack foods.

Hydrogenation is a process used by food manufacturers to improve the stability of vegetable oils and to convert liquid oils into solid fats to get the right consistency in foods such as cakes and pastries.

Products made with these fats also have a longer shelf life than if made with unhydrogenated oils.

But trans fats, like saturated fat, raises the level of low-density lipoprotein in the blood (LDL or "bad cholesterol") which increases the risk of coronary heart disease.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has suggested substituting nonhydrogenated unsaturated fats (especially polyunsaturated fat) for saturated and trans fats in the diet to help prevent cardiovascular diseases.

In the US, if a fat or oil ingredient is completely hydrogenated, the name in the ingredient list of prepackaged foods should include the term "hydrogenated". Or, if partially hydrogenated, the term "partially hydrogenated". Also the content of trans fats should be disclosed in the Nutrition Fact panel.

However, this is not required currently by law in Hong Kong.

The Food and Drugs (Composition and Labelling) Regulations require prepackaged food to be labelled with a list of ingredients in descending order of weight or volume determined as at the time of their use when the food was packaged.

Accordingly, prepackaged bread or biscuit should have such ingredients as margarine or shortening which may or may not contain trans fats, labelled for the information of consumers. But the labelling practice is often confusing.

For instance, the Council has found on the market bread and biscuits labelled "植物油 ( vegetable oil ) " in Chinese but, "vegetable shortening" or "margarine" in English, and the latter may contain trans fats. 

Likewise, some were labelled "動物油 ( animal oil ) " in Chinese but "animal shortening" in English.

The chemical composition of vegetable shortenings (植物起酥油) and margarines (人造牛油) is different from that of vegetable oils (植物油); similarly, animal shortenings (動物起酥油) are different from animal oils (動物油). The labellings are not interchangeable.

Such labelling practice may be a violation of the Regulations, and the Consumer Council has relayed the samples to the Centre for Food Safety for whatever follow-up action deemed necessary.

Consumers should recognize that, generally speaking, shortenings could mean hydrogenated oil or fat, containing potentially trans fats. In Hong Kong, a product labelled with shortening is not required to specify if it is hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated.

According to the Centre for Food Safety, the Government has proposed to introduce a Labelling Scheme on Nutrition Information for prepackaged food. In Phase II of the scheme, if a prepackaged food bears any fat- or cholesterol-related claims, its level of saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, as well as trans fats and cholesterol should also be labelled.