Banning Trans Fats--How Important Is It?

On January 1, 2010, California became the first state to ban trans fats in restaurants. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill back in July 2008, but restaurants had until the first of this year to comply. Under the new law, restaurants may only use oils, margarine, and shortening with less than half a gram of trans fat per serving.

Trans fats are generally considered unhealthy, and have long been linked to heart disease and obesity. These fats are created through a process called "partial hydrogenation," where hydrogen is pumped into liquid oil at high temperatures. This process improves the shelf-life of foods, but the resulting trans fats have been shown to lower high-density lipoproteins (HDLs), the "good" cholesterol, and increase low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), the "bad" cholesterol. This in turn causes arteries to become more clogged and increases the risk for heart disease. One study even showed that just a 2 percent increase in energy intake from trans fats was associated with a 23 percent increase in the incidence of coronary artery disease (Mozaffarian et al. 2006).

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