Stealth Fats Lurk in Favorite Foods
Many 'healthy foods' full of unlabeled trans fats
Feb. 10, 2003 -- Grab a handful of Nabisco Wheat Thins. A healthy snack? Maybe not. The baked-wheat treats are filled with just as much of an artery-clogging kind of fat -- 2 grams -- as a Burger King Dutch Apple Pie.
Don't bother switching to Sunshine Cheez-It Baked Snack Crackers. Like two Eggo Buttermilk Waffles, they hold 1.5 grams of the stuff. So does 3/4 of a cup of Kellogg's Cracklin' Oat Bran Cereal. I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! Margarine carries 2 grams; there's even a half gram in Quaker Chocolate Chunk Chewy Low Fat Granola Bars. The figures come from tests run on 30 top-selling foods by Consumers Union. They appear in the March issue of Consumer Reports.
The sneak attack on your health comes from trans fat. Don't look for it on the label. Current FDA rules don't require it to be listed along with saturated fat -- the other kind of fat that's particularly bad for you.
"Trans fats are bad," Marvin M. Lipman, MD, chief medical advisor for Consumer Reports, tells WebMD. "They are there and they are not labeled."
What other foods are on the Consumer Reports list? Here are a few:
- 1 glazed Dunkin' Donut: 4 grams of trans fat + 2.5 grams of saturated fat = 6.5 grams of bad fat.
- 3 Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Real Chocolate Chip Cookies: 1.5 grams of trans fat + 2 grams of saturated fat = 3.5 grams of bad fat.
- 1 cup of Orville Redenbacher's Popping Corn (Movie Theatre Butter): 0.5 grams of trans fat + 1 gram of saturated fat = 1.5 grams of bad fat.
- 6 chips of Frito-Lay Tostitos Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips: 0.5 grams of trans fat + 1 gram of saturated fat = 1.5 grams of bad fat.
- 1/2 cup of Post Selects Great Grains Whole Grain Cereal: 0.5 grams of trans fat + 0.5 grams of saturated fat = 1 gram of bad fat.
- 2 Pillsbury Buttermilk Waffles: 1.5 grams of trans fat + 1.5 grams of saturated fat = 3 grams of bad fat.
- 1 tablespoon of Crisco All Vegetable Shortening: 1.5 grams of trans fat + 2.5 grams of saturated fat = 4 grams of bad fat.
But not all healthy baked foods have trans fat. Neither Arnold nor Pepperidge Farm 100% whole wheat bread has any trans fat or saturated fat.
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