Dec 1 (Heart Center Online) - According to the October issue of the Harvard Heart Letter, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed clearer nutritional labels that would reflect the amount of trans fatty acids present in American foods.

Trans-fat is very common in margarines, candy bars, peanut butter, doughnuts, french fries and a wide variety of other packaged or canned foods. However, nutritional labels can be very misleading when it comes to identifying trans fatty acids in a food product.

Trans-fat is listed as a "polyunsaturated fat" on food labels, but it acts much more like a saturated fat in the body. Whereas polyunsaturated fats do not increase levels of cholesterol or triglycerides, trans fatty acids do. They basically provide all the negative health consequences commonly associated with saturated fat, without any of the benefits of the essential fatty acids found in naturally occurring polyunsaturated fats. In fact, trans-fat has been associated with a significantly increased risk of heart attack in both men and women.

Because of the health risks associated with trans-fat, the FDA has proposed clearer foods labels that are described in October's Harvard Heart Letter. The new labels would list trans-fat as a type of saturated fat, instead of an unsaturated fat. An asterisk (*) after the amount of saturated fat would also point consumers to the sentence that tells them exactly how many grams of trans-fat are present in the product. The labels would also restrict certain health claims such as "low in saturated fat" or "extra lean," depending on the amount of trans-fat present in the product.

Until or unless the proposed food labels have been approved, shoppers on the look-out for trans-fat may carefully review the ingredient list on canned and packaged foods for the term "hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated." Other terms that are becoming more common on food labels are "no trans fats" or "no trans." For example, a butter-like spread that is free of trans-fat has recently been developed by an American university and put on the market. Certain brands of peanut butter are also free of trans-fat.

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