Hold the Hydrogen!
Hold the Hydrogen!
Cue the brass bands! Launch the fireworks! McDonald’s is eliminating trans fats!
That announcement was greeted as “good news” last week. And you have to wonder why. The folks at McDonald’s are removing a dangerous component from a product that’s marginally nutritious, at best. And this is some sort of victory?
Well, I guess you have to take your good news wherever you find it these days – however meager it might be. The irony is that the good news might turn out to be anything but.
Blending in
Media reports about the new oil that McDonald’s will be phasing in over the next few months described the oil as a blend of canola, soybean, and corn oils. But each report missed a key point: When it comes to trans fats, it’s not the oil, it’s the processing.
Partial hydrogenation is the processing technique that creates trans fats. If you partially hydrogenate soy oil, you’ll get trans fats. If you partially hydrogenate canola oil, you’ll get trans fats. So the “blend” doesn’t really tell us much. The big question: How is the blend processed? If the answer is: interesterified, then the celebration over Mickey D’s ousted trans fats may be premature.
Over the past few years, foods prepared with partially hydrogenated oils have come to be known far and wide as a health threat, linked to higher risk of heart disease and cancer. But food manufacturers and restaurant managers have balked at turning away from the convenience of partially hydrogenated oils. That’s why many of them have started to use oils processed by a new method: interesterification. (Yummmthat sounds healthier already!)
Like partially hydrogenated oils, interesterified oils have a long shelf life, which makes them just about as appealing to restaurants and food manufacturers as oils with trans fats. But there’s one little catch: Interesterified fats may be nearly as bad for you as trans fats.
From terrible to awful
A recent issue of Nutrition & Metabolism carries a study that compared the effects of three oils: interesterified soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and palm oil. Three different diets were prepared in which 30 percent of calories came from one of the three oils. Thirty subjects followed each of the diets over the course of three study phases. Each phase lasted four weeks.
Two key results stood out:
1) HDL cholesterol levels dropped on the interesterified fat diet
2) Insulin levels dropped 10 percent on the partially hydrogenated soybean oil diet, but dropped more than TWICE as much on the interesterified fat diet, causing average blood sugar to rise by an alarming 20 percent
More research will be needed to confirm these results. And hopefully that research is underway, because one of the study authors, Dr. K.C. Hayes of Brandeis University, told Reuters Health that interesterification is “probably the number-one process to replace trans fats.”
We’ll have to wait for more thorough reporting to find out if McDonald’s new blend of oils is interesterificated. In the meantime, Dr. Hayes offered a very useful tip on how to determine if a food product contains interesterificated oil. Just check the nutrition panel and look for the words “fully hydrogenated.”
Fully? Partially? Let’s call the whole (hydrogenated) thing off!
