No Simple Transformation

The late Theodor Geisel, known to legions of children and adults who remain young at heart as Dr. Seuss, said: “Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” But not so in the case of trans fats, where the inverse is true. In fact, the answer is one of the more complicated the food industry is currently facing.

On the surface especially to the self-styled experts who, because they can prepare a family meal from scratch, and perhaps even read a nutritional article or two, consider themselves food-science authorities it’s a no-brainer. Just use the healthy oil of your choice (preferably something that’s minimally processed so as to not introduce any more evil chemicals into our bodies) and the problem is solved. You know, like those olive-oil-based sandwich-cookie cremes.

One of my favorite subversive sayings is: “Cheap. Good. Fast. Pick two.” That basically sums up the industry’s current transition to trans-free. This impetus for the mass change to hydrogenated oils was because they were relatively inexpensive (cheap), worked fairly well in the applications that originally had saturates (good), were generally believed to be a healthy alternative (good) and used a technology that had been around for decades (fast). Still, the switch didn’t actually happen overnight. Product developers had to tweak formulas and make some trade-offs in finished product quality, and the fats and oils companies had to modify their processes and products to more closely mimic the qualities provided by saturates. But after significant time, effort and expenditures, we got there.

And then the other shoe dropped.

... Cut to Woody Allen’s “Sleeper.”

Dr. No. 1: ... wheat germ, organic honey and tiger’s milk.

Dr. No. 2: Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.

Dr. No. 1: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or ... hot fudge?

Dr. No. 2: Those were thought to be unhealthy ...precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

And so it was with the trans-containing hydrogenated fats.

So the process began again. And still continues in many quarters, especially when it comes to baked and fried products. Product designers still have to determine what fats best meet their needs in terms of health, function, cost and availability. Plus, don’t forget that nutritional science is not done with analyzing fats’ and fatty acids’ ultimate impact on health.

We’ve tried to bring the current science  both health and formulation  in focus for you in this month’s “Trans Fat Update” supplement, and plan to broaden the discussion with an April webinar on the topic. (See www.foodproductdesign.comfor details.) We make these available so that another one of Dr. Seuss’s famous lines should more aptly apply to your quest for better fats: “Will you succeed? Yes you will indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)”