Anti-fat brigade comes to ban trans-fat in your diet

If you are having trouble dealing with the trans fats, don’t worry—your doctor might be just ready to do it for you.

Doctors in Nigeria have begun a project to push a total ban on trans fatty acids (or TFAs)—or at least ensure the proportion of trans fats does not exceed 2% in fats and oils used in “publicly available foods” nationwide.

Both the ban and restriction are among a memorandum the Nigerian Medical Association’s ICON project is to forward to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control in efforts to control cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).

The ICON project [ Improving the Cardiovascular Health of Nigeria] comes amidst recommendation by the World Health Organisation to change diets in efforts to control non-communicable diseases.

NCDs account for at least one in four deaths of men and women in the country—and include diabetes, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and cardiovascular diseases.

“Of all the four main classes of noncommunicable diseases, cardiovascular disease is worthy of separate mention as the leader of that pack,” said Dr Francis Faduyile, present of the Nigerian Medical Association.

It is implicated in the start of nearly every other noncommunicable disease—and transfats play a huge role.

So what are transfats? Keep your butter from churned milk. Margarine isn’t your butterfat from animal. It is an imitation of butter made from processed and sometimes altered vegetable oils. A process called hydrogenation produces fats and oils that have longer shelf lives and probably taste better. But this same process also introduces something called “trans unsaturated fatty acids” into the fats and oils used in cooking and baking.

The food industry has upped the ante of TFAs in snack food, packaged food, baked goods and frying fast food. Unfortunately TFAs lower levels of “good” cholesterol in your body and raise the levels of “bad” cholesterol. Diets rich in TFAs increase chances of heart disease (cardiovascular disease). It is typical in atherosclerosis—when the walls of the blood vessels harden, form plaques, which may build up to cause blockage of blood vessels, or dislodge and travel to other parts of the body to cause

“We have been feeding our next generation with the wrong kind of food,” says Dr Tonnie Okoye, national strategic programme manager for the NMA.

“It has made noncommunicable diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases, become an emerging epidemic.”

NAFDAC is reviewing the National Policy on Fats and Oils. The policy was last reviewed in 2005. The memo from the ICON Project is expected to guide NAFDAC to package “clearcut polices and actions to mitigate the effect of consumption of trans fatty acids in publicly available foods,” says Ummulkhairi Bobboi, an assistant director for food safety at the food regulatory agency.

A successful eradication of transfatty acids in publicly available diets will introduce a ban on import, production and distribution” of foods with TFAs on the Nigerian market. That would see millions of litres of oil ineligible to sit on kitchen shelves in homes, in restaurants, fast food joints. It is anticipated taking on the trans fatty acids that props up the snack-and-baking industry could be another onslaught against Big Tobacco.

The ICON Project does not anticipate a fightback from the food industry, though.

Okoye says a simple exchange is expected: producers may continue to produce or import vegetable oils, with one condition: the oils have to exclude trans fat or limit trans fat content to 2%.

A revised Fats and Oils policy this year will also see producers declare on food labelling that their product is free of trans fat—or if not free, the proportion.

Bobboi says the idea is to help you choose.