The removal of trans fats from all kinds of foods is certainly good for our health. But how good? That depends on what kind of fat has replaced them.
Three doctors from Gentofte University Hospital in Denmark decided to find out. They picked 19 popular kinds of fast foods, cookies, cakes and snacks that were known to be heavy on the trans fats, then compared them with 19 similar foods with low trans fats.
Before we get to the results, a quick primer on the relative merits of different kinds of fat. Trans fats are vegetable oils with added hydrogen to make them more solid. That makes them useful to food manufacturers, but bad for people – they raise bad cholesterol and reduce good cholesterol. The more you eat, the more you increase your risk of coronary heart disease.
The same is true of saturated fats, which occur naturally in foods like cheese, ground beef and chocolate.But monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (from fish, avocados and vegetable oils, among other items) don’t raise bad cholesterol. In fact, when used as a substitute for trans fats or saturated fats, unsaturated fats can help reduce your cholesterol.
So if food manufacturers were simply replacing trans fats with saturated fats, they really wouldn’t be making their products that much better.
And now, drum roll please ….
French fries were a natural candidate for this analysis. Fries that were low in trans fats had a corresponding increase in polyunsaturated fats, the best kind. For microwave popcorn, about half the trans fats were replaced with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, with saturated fat making up the difference. Cakes and cookies swapped nearly one-quarter of their trans fats for the better unsaturated fats, but most of the substitution was for saturated fat. The results were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The authors concluded that when trans fats were removed from foods, they really did get healthier.
We recently wrote about new labels you'll be seeing in grocery stores soon that are designed to help consumers make more healthful choices. But how helpful will they be? Consider the fact that Frosted Flakes would qualify for the new industry-designed "Smart Choices" logo.
Check out the Chicago Tribune's story about these new labeling schemes and what various nutrition experts think of them.
The involvement of industry in developing Smart Choices "is a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house," comments Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center, in the article. Katz helped put together a different system, NuVal, which rates foods on a scale of 1 to 100 based on nutritional content and was developed without industry involvement. (Frosted Flakes scored only 22 on that scale.)
The food industry isn't the only organization to get dinged in the article. As the article makes clear, the American Heart Assn. has long been criticized for its endorsement of products through the heart-check mark program. The association gets paid for those heart-check marks, and not all of the foods that can qualify are ones you'd necessarily consider healthful, even if they are low in saturated fat and cholesterol. One example from the Tribune article is Kellogg's Smart Start Strong Heart Antioxidants cereal, which has the association's heart-check mark but contains 14 grams of sugar per serving.
Read more about the American Heart Assn. heart-check mark controversy in an online exerpt from NYU nutrition professor Marion Nestle's 2003 book, "Food Politics."
Vegetarians have been pretty confident about this -- and it likely comes as no surprise to anyone capable of understanding a nutrition label. But the new assessment comes from the American Dietetic Assn. so might carry some weight with disease-threatened people on the fence.
The judgment is offered up in the organization's updated position paper on the matter. And the more relevant aspect is that the paper says going meat-free may help prevent or treat some chronic diseases.
"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life-cycle including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence and for athletes."
On a more helpful note, the association is also offering up a detailed nutritional chart of various vegetarian burgers and hot dogs.
In the burger category, MorningStar Farms' Grillers Original and the Boca All American Classic top the protein list with 15 grams of protein each. (The Boca also tops the sodium list, with 500 milligrams.)
The hot dog category is considerably smaller, with only four varieties listed. Of those, the Yves Meatless Hot Dog has the most protein, with 10 grams.
The chart also includes comparisons with real meat.
No surprise, the vegetarian burgers and hot dogs tend to have less fat and more fiber (both good) than real meat, but more sodium and less protein (not so good). Here's an overview of the results.
-- Tami Dennis
Photo: Going meatless doesn't mean you have to give up the barbecue.
Another month, another food-borne outbreak. In the most recent E.coli news, the bug has shown up in cookie dough and, possibly, beef.
In case you've wondered what it is that makes E. coliO157:H7 so very much more dangerous than the E. coli that resides in great numbers in our bowels (I have) here's a primer.
But first, a look at it under the electron microscope. Pretty, eh? (In reality it's not pink: that's a bit of artistic license.)
This toxin-producing trait doesn't come from the E. coli genes -- it comes, instead, from a virus that invaded the bacterium some time in the past. There are a whole class of bacteria-invading viruses, known as bacteriophages, in nature -- in the Soviet Union, people used to drink bacteriophage tonics that they'd get from their doctors, in the hopes that these would fight bacterial infections. Scientists are still investigating whether some phages (as they're known for short) may work effectively as antibiotic stand-ins.
The virus that directs formation of shiga toxin in E. coli isn't the kind that invades a cell, then immediately turns it to tatters while making thousands of copies of itself. Instead, the virus can sit there happily inside the bug -- its DNA stitched neatly into the genome of the bacterium -- steadily directing formation of the shiga toxin protein courtesy of two genes it carries.
What does shiga toxin do? Nothing nice. According to Todar's Online Textbook of Bacteriology (here's the link, in case you don't have it set as your home page), shiga toxin is 100,000 times more toxic than snake venom. It acts by inactivating a key part of a cell's machinery, stopping the cell's ability to make proteins. And thus the cell dies.
The toxin, as it's formed, leaks out of E. coli O157:H7. Then it binds to human cells and enters them: it so happens that it binds especially well to kidney cells, helping explain why renal failure can occur in E. coli O157:H7 food-poisoning cases. Cattle aren't bothered by the bug -- because their kidneys lack the receptor that allows the toxin to get into human kidneys and wreak such havoc.
So there you have it. Granted, none of this is the kind of thing that anyone in the throes of a dangerous food-poisoning episode would be particularly interested in knowing about.
If those low-carb diets are too meat-reliant -- or if you're worried about your LDL cholesterol levels -- consider the Eco-Atkins. It's similar to the traditional Atkins diet, but minus the animal products. Yep -- vegetarian.
All that meat in the typical low-carb, high-protein diet still makes some doctors leery, as it turns out. So although Atkins-like diets have been found to reduce insulin resistance and raise HDL, or good, cholesterol, the diets cause some concern because they haven't done much for LDL, or bad, cholesterol levels. At the same time, doctors have been hard-pressed to deny such diets' effectiveness for weight loss, at least in the short term.
So researchers in a new study decided to replace the animal proteins in a low-carb, high-protein diet with vegetable proteins.
In a study of 47 overweight people, researchers at St. Michael's Hospital in Canada put half of the participants on a variation of the Atkins diet (i.e. the Eco-Atkins) and some on a more traditional vegetarian regimen.
Like its forebear, the Eco-Atkins diet was low-carb, but the specifics vary dramatically. In the newer version:
* 31% of calories came from vegetable protein (in order of reliance: gluten, soy, fruits and vegetables, nuts and cereals).
* 43% of calories came from fats (again, in order of reliance: nuts, vegetable oils, soy products, avocado, cereals, fruits and vegetables and seitan products).
* 26% of the calories came from carbs.
The other diet was a high-carbohydrate, low-fat, lacto-ovo diet (dairy and eggs allowed). Carbs made up 58% of the calories, with fats accounting for 25% and protein 16%.
Both diets provided significantly fewer calories than its participants likely would have preferred -- 60% of estimated calorie requirements.
So, not surprisingly, both groups lost weight.
But the folks on the Eco-Atkins diet had greater reductions in LDL and total cholesterol than did the folks in the higher-carb diet.
The abstract of the study, published June 8 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, reaches this conclusion:
A low-carbohydrate plant-based diet has lipid-lowering advantages over a high-carbohydrate, low-fat weight-loss diet in improving heart disease risk factors not seen with conventional low-fat diets with animal products.
Fairly enough, the Low Carb Diets Blog takes issue with the diet used as a comparison:
They could have compared a regular mixed low-carb diet to a vegan or vegetarian low-carb diet. Or compare a high-carb vegan diet to a low-carb vegan diet, where the food sources for the various macronutrients were similar, and only the proportions varied. As it is, the reasons for the results are already being questioned in various media ("It's the soy!" "No, it's the fiber!") as well as in the conclusions written by the authors themselves.
I love that vegetarianism is becoming more mainstream, but I wish that people would just call it what it is and stop trying to put cute names on it to mask it.
But it seems hard to deny there's some potential in this eating plan...
--Tami Dennis
Photo: Soybeans are the friend of vegan dieters. In this study, however, gluten was a better friend. Credit: Kari Goodnough / Bloomberg News
The movie "Food, Inc." opens in several cities, including Los Angeles, on Friday. It's a critical look at the way food in the United States is produced. ("You'll never want to eat again," commented a colleague who's seen the movie already.)
Food, Inc. decries our processed-food diets, industrial farming, hormone-fed animals, cloned meat, genetic engineering and more.
A Reuters story describes how the food industry is fighting back against the movie, partly via websites of its own, such as one called safefoodinc.com, run by meat and poultry producers. You can see movies there too, with riveting titles such as "Turkey Production and Processing."
In an Associated Press story, director Robert Kenner suggests small ways in which individuals can change their habits to make a difference: "Go to a farmers market whenever you can. Eat a little less meat. Read labels when you go into a store. Shop the outer rows of the supermarket. Cook at home. Buy less processed food."
Adds author Michael Pollan, "Get involved in your school lunch program. Get junk food out of the whole school. Sign up with a listserv for one of the many groups that’s tracking this. Your congressman/woman needs to hear from you."
Clearly, we're eating in terrible ways in this country, and there are so many things that facilitate that, starting with our genetic predisposition to love high-calorie foods and to revel in variety, plus an industry that caters very efficiently to those desires: There are 47,000 products in a modern supermarket, according to the movie. Such temptation! And because of the way food prices are structured, some of the least healthful, most caloric choices are the cheapest.
And so many questions. It would be great if a local-food, everyone-eats-organic, no-pesticide way of farming could still get everyone on the planet fed. Maybe it could, but has anyone done the math? And does the movie mix in legitimate concerns with fears that aren't grounded in science? For example, a lot of data suggest that so-called cloned meat -- actually, meat from regular cattle whose fathers were clones -- is no different than "normal" meat. So, leaving aside the "yuck" factor and animal welfare issues for a moment, is there a food safety issue with cloning? And are organic farms less -- or more -- likely to give us E.coli or salmonella? I'd really like to know.
We recently wrote about the 2009 Xtreme Eating Awards from the consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest -- a list of some of the most calorific, salty and fatty restaurant meals.
Our conjecture was: We have become so accustomed to these shocking numbers that they're losing their shock value. (Read that earlier post here.)
Mike Jacobson, the center's executive director, can't truly believe that is so, and sent the following letter, including a few additional numbers:
"Gosh, Rosie...
I've been looking at
restaurant foods for 20-some years, but even I am shocked by the numbers, like:
Olive
Garden
Meals
Calories Sodium mg
1 Breadstick* 150 350 Tour of Italy (Lasagna) 1,450 3,830 Garden Fresh Salad w/ House Dressing 350 1,990 Coca Cola 99 6 TOTAL 2,049 6,176
Any lingering guilt over opting for whole milk, instead of nonfat, in that iced vanilla latte might be a little misplaced.
As Robert Ashley writes in Gourmet of what he calls the Gross-Food Movement:
"The movement seeks to create food concoctions that violate all the rules of healthy eating and gustatory sophistication. Gross foodies compete in a battle to create the most outlandish, gluttonous, artery-destroying food combinations possible: Deep-fried peanut butter. Meatloaf stuffed with macaroni and cheese and wrapped in bacon. Sloppy Joes on Krispy Kreme doughnut buns. And that’s just the simple stuff. ...
"Something about these creations just grabs your attention—layer upon layer of gluttony in an age when we’re inundated with messages about improving our diets, eating less-processed food, and watching our weight. It’s a middle finger to the Michael Pollan and Alice Waters types, an assertion of the American birthright to consume in deadly quantities. The 'gross' in Gross Food, after all, also implies an excessive size."
-- Tami Dennis
Photo: If one strip of bacon is good, wouldn't, say, 10 strips be better? Credit: Los Angeles Times
Can it be that restaurant-food reports are losing their power to shock? Several of us, with bated breath, gathered round the computer Wednesday to read the announcement of the Center for Science in the Public Interest's
Xtreme Eating Awards 2009
...a list of nine restaurant meals criminally loaded with calories, salt and saturated fat.
Such as the Red Lobster Ultimate Fondue, "shrimp and crabmeat in a creamy lobster cheese sauce served in a warm crispy sourdough bowl" -- 1,490 calories.
"1,490 calories, is that all?" one of us said. "I would have thought it would be way more than that."
Or the Olive Garden's "Tour of Italy," a medley of lasagna, chicken parmigiana and fettuccine alfredo. 1,450 calories.
"Not as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe I could add a margarita -- or two."
Of course, these items are loaded with sodium and fat and contain pretty much all the calories a lot of us should eat in a day (if not more). And, naturally, it seems very useful to have these revelatory counts available, especially given the historical reluctance of some food chains to reveal their nutritional information.
And Lord only knows why anyone would want to morph a quesadilla with a bacon cheeseburger (Applebee's) or deep-fry macaroni and cheese (Cheesecake Factory). Deep-fried Mars Bar -- maybe. But deep-fried mac-'n-cheese?
The problem is, though, we're desensitized, like kids who've watched too many iterations of "Friday the 13th." We're becoming unshockable. Time was, revelations about the hundreds of calories lurking in Jamba Juice smoothies made us go "Aaaagh!" like the first time Freddy popped up in somebody's nightmare.
But these days, unless it's got 5,500 calories and 12,000 milligrams of salt and 10 days' worth of saturated fat before you even add the cheesy bread sticks and salad dressing, it may be increasingly difficult to flabbergast us.
-- Rosie Mestel
Photo credit: Kate Sherwood / Nutrition Action Healthletter
Starbucks, according to an article from Reuters, will revamp its food offerings at the end of the month. It'll have more salad. Phase out food dyes and artificial flavorings. And get rid of that whipping boy of the sweetener family, high-fructose corn syrup, in the majority of its baked good offerings.
According to the article, "Reworked baked goods that will debut at month-end include Banana Walnut Bread, which is made from 11 ingredients -- a number closer to home-made, a reduced fat Very Berry Coffee Cake that is 20 percent fruit, and an organic blueberry bar that was previously available only in the Pacific Northwest and a handful of other markets."
The Center for Consumer Freedom, a restaurant trade group, doesn't think much of this. In a statement, it says: "Beet sugar, cane sugar, and corn sugar are 100% equivalent in all nutritional aspects. An apple fritter is an apple fritter, not health food. And no matter what Starbucks' marketing whiz kids say, it will still have 420 calories and 20 grams of fat."
Obviously, the Center for Consumer Freedom has a ... position. But that doesn't mean that they're wrong about this. Chemically speaking, there isn't very much difference between cane/beet sugar -- which are 50% glucose and 50% fructose when digested -- and high-fructose corn syrup, which is about 55% fructose and 45% glucose.
For a few recent articles on the endless high-fructose corn syrup issue:
"Poor High Fructose Corn Syrup," writes Dan Mitchell at the Big Money. He calls the trend toward touting "real sugar" in foods cynical marketing opportunism, and notes that too much sugar of any type runs the risk of making you fat.
"On the whole, the research tends to support the theory that HFCS and sugar in general are pretty much alike in terms of their effects on human health," he writes. The problem with HFCS, he adds, is that it's subsidized and cheap -- and thus doesn't cost much to toss in all kinds of foods.
"HFCS is the new trans fat?" writes New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle in her blog. "HFCS isn’t really high in fructose. It has about the same amount of fructose as common table sugar. Both are about half fructose and half glucose, and both cause metabolic problems when you eat too much of them. So go easy on the sugars!"
Here's what a Mayo Clinic nutritionist has to say, that you might want to try limiting all kinds of added sugar:
"If you're concerned about the amount of high-fructose corn syrup or other sweeteners in your diet, consider these tips:
Limit processed foods.
Avoid foods that contain added sugar.
Choose fresh fruit rather than fruit juice or fruit-flavored drinks. Even 100% fruit juice has a high concentration of sugar.
Choose fruit canned in its own juices instead of heavy syrup.
Drink less soda.
Don't allow sweetened beverages to replace milk, especially for children."
Tami Dennis, who takes the word "skeptic" to previously uncharted territory, is the Times' Health and Science editor. She's adamant that pitches promoting awareness days, weeks or months are, by their nature, non-stories. And, because she's an adult, she refuses to use words like "veggies," "tummy" and "yummy."
Rosie Mestel, deputy Health and Science editor, studied genetics before abandoning flies, fungi and DNA for health/medical writing. Her hero is the biologist Ernst Haeckel, whose jellyfish paintings inspired snazzy chandeliers. Her favorite toast-spread is Marmite, a British delicacy made of yeast extract. Her least-favorite word is "millenniums."
Melissa Healy is a staff writer for the Health section reporting from Washington D.C. Healy's a veteran of The Times' National staff, having covered the Pentagon, Congress, poverty and social welfare, the environment, and the White House before shifting to Health in 2003. She writes frequently about mental health and human behavior, about federal health policy, prescription medication and ethics in medicine. More wonk than wellness freak, Healy chooses to believe in the health benefits of coffee and wine, and considers water a better work-out medium than beverage.
Karen Kaplan covers genetics, stem cells and cloning. She and colleague Thomas H. Maugh II comprise about 25% of the unofficial MIT-Alumni-in-Journalism Club, and she is proud to have taken more math (5) than English (0) courses in college. Her contributions to Booster Shots will, she hopes, appear more frequently than postings to her mommy blog.
Thomas H. Maugh II has been a science and medical writer at the Times for 23 years. Before that, he was on the staff of the journal Science for 13 years.
He has bachelor's degrees in English and chemistry from MIT and a doctorate in chemistry from UC Santa Barbara.
After a brief stint as a sports writer, Shari Roan turned to health journalism and has covered the topic for The Times for 18 years. She is the author of three books and the mother of two daughters, both teenagers who refer to her as a "health freak." She likes to jog, watch baseball and is very happy that dark chocolate contains some health benefit.
Jeannine Stein writes about fitness, sports medicine and obesity for the Health section. She’s a gym rat from way back and never met an elliptical trainer she didn’t like. Well, maybe one or two. She tempers exercise with a steady diet of reality television because she believes it’s all about balance.
