As the nation moves to significantly reduce trans fat consumption, the American Heart Association is launching "Face The Fats," an educational campaign to teach consumers how to minimize trans fat in their diet, while avoiding the unintended health consequence of defaulting to more saturated fat.
The campaign features an "edutainment" Web site where the Bad Fats Brothers -- named Sat and Trans -- come to life, an interactive fat calculator and recipes developed by celebrity chef Alton Brown.
Among the campaign's top priorities is to encourage replacement of trans fat-laden partially hydrogenated vegetable oils with oils high in unsaturated fats -- monounsaturated and polyunsaturated -- as stated in today's Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. The journal includes the proceedings of a trans fat conference that the American Heart Association convened to better understand the challenges the country faces as it moves to oils without trans fat.
"Trans fat has received a lot of well-deserved scrutiny -- at the same time, while it's critical that we continue to push aggressively to minimize its consumption, trans fat is just one part of the 'big fat picture,'" said Robert H. Eckel, M.D., immediate past president of the American Heart Association, chair of its trans fat task force and professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center at Denver. "It's equally important that we avoid increasing saturated fat in its place. Both trans and saturated fats raise LDLs, the bad cholesterol, and increase the risk of developing heart disease."
On average, American adults consume approximately 2.2 percent of total calories from trans fat and four to five times as much saturated fat a day -- far more than the limits recommended by the American Heart Association. To help consumers better understand the recommended fat limits and make smarter choices, the new campaign features a personalized tool, My Fats Translator, on the campaign's new Website. Users can input their age, gender, height, weight and level of physical activity into the simple calculator tool, and in return receive their personal daily limits for total fat, saturated fat and trans fat consumption.
"Our bodies need some fat, but it's clear that many of us consume a lot more than we need. And all too often we load up on fats that aren't very good for us, passing up more healthful varieties," said campaign spokesperson and celebrity chef Alton Brown, who developed recipes that also are featured on http://www.americanheart.org/FaceTheFats. "I'm taking part in this campaign because I want to help people to make better food decisions whether in the market, their kitchens or in restaurants."
The American Heart Association's campaign helps break down complex fat information, focusing initially on the bad fats and healthier alternatives. It's important for consumers to eat all fats in moderation, and eat foods with the "bad" fats as treats only -- once in a while -- rather than often.
BAD fats: Trans and saturated fats -- Trans fat is found in many foods, but especially in commercial baked goods (doughnuts, pastries, muffins, cakes, pie crusts, biscuits and cookies), fried foods (French fries, fried chicken, breaded chicken nuggets and breaded fish), snack foods (crackers), and other foods made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, vegetable shortening, or hard margarine. (Soft margarines typically do not contain trans fat.) -- Saturated fat occurs naturally in many foods. The saturated fat we eat comes primarily from animal sources, including beef, lamb, pork, poultry with skin, beef fat, lard and cream, butter, cheese, and other dairy products made from whole or reduced-fat (2 percent) milk. These foods also contain cholesterol. Some plant foods, such as palm oil, palm kernel oil and coconut oil, also contain saturated fat.
BETTER fats: Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats -- Major sources of monounsaturated fat include olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil, avocados, and many nuts and seeds. -- Major sources of polyunsaturated fat include a number of vegetable oils (soybean oil, corn oil, safflower oil and sunflower oil), fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring and trout) and some nuts and seeds.