Whether I’m speaking to a group or consulting one-on-one the issue of trans-fats and label laws frequently comes up. Today I am reprinting a blog post that I wrote on this subject last summer.
June 2008 – This weekend my Southern California friends took me to the San Diego County Fair at the Del Mar Race Track. It was fun! We experienced all the fixn’s of the typical American summer fair: pie eating contests, demolition derby races, carnival rides, pig races, sunburns, and a lot of food. I saw (but didn’t eat) the deep fat fried concoctions that make their way to the summer-time fairs.
Walk me past enough signs for fried Snickers, fried Twinkies, fried Coca-Cola, fried chicken breasts sandwiched between two Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Voila! I am ready to write my next blog post. 
One of the single most important things you can do for good nutrition and good health is: avoid eating trans fats! You will find trans fats, also known as partially hydrogenated oils, in fried foods such as; fried fish, fried chicken, fried appetizers, and yes, fried Twinkies 
The other place you’ll frequently find trans fats is in boxed, packaged or frozen food. Trans fats are added to packaged food to help preserve shelf life, but they don’t help preserve your life! Trans fats are a huge public health problem. In 2006 it was legislated that all labels must report the trans fat content. 
But beware! Under FDA regulations, “if the serving contains less than 0.5 gram [of trans fat] the content, when declared, shall be expressed as zero.” In others words there might be partially hydrogenated oils in your granola bar, crackers, frozen dinner, coffee creamer, etc. but the food manufacturer can tell you their product is free of all trans fats. How can they legally do this? It’s easy, they just decrease the serving size. Very sneaky! This is what you can do to protect yourself? Read the actual INGREDIENT PARAGRAPH. 
If you see the words PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED, you are eating a TRANS FAT. Even if the Nutrition Facts say this 
do not assume it is true. The only way you’ll know if the product really has 0 grams of trans fat is to read the ingredient paragraph and look for the words, partially hydrogenated. Take a look through your cupboards and read the ingredient paragraphs next time you are grocery shopping! For more information on trans fats and their ill effects on our health, check out this site Ban Trans Fats.
About the author
Jolene Park, B.A., Certified Nutrition Consultant, Yoga Teacher founded Healthy Discoveries in 2001. She facilitates health and nutrition workshops for companies large and small across the U.S., and provides wellness and nutrition coaching for individuals and multiple medical offices throughout the greater Boulder/Denver area. Learn more.
July 1st 4:01 pm
You have a very nice blog . And the post is really good. I never knew about this partially hydrogenated term. This is something new to me. Thanks for sharing . Next time I am in a grocery shop I am gonna watch out for this.
August 11th 3:06 pm
This is a great post! This reminds me of the the saying about how 2 + 2 could be 5, for relatively large values of 2.
August 12th 8:37 am
Hi Jolene!
There was a time in my careless teens that I would have eaten this stuff, but it didn’t exist then, except for Twinkles, where the term, “nutritional information,” is an oxymoron!
I’ve been careful about trans fats for quite a while. I’m glad to see this post, and that there is much more information available now for those that want it.
August 12th 1:35 pm
So very important! Thanks for bringing attention to the importance of the ingredients list compared to the nutrition label.
That t-shirts pretty darn cute.
August 25th 10:40 pm
Good tip on the transfats… I’ve known the serving size/under a half a gram trick but did not realize transfats = partially hydrogenated – Thanks!
Fried Twinkies sounds over the top… maybe enough to get someone to try it?