LOS ANGELES — Scientists finally have some good news about fat in our foods.
Contrary to fears, most food manufacturers and restaurants did not just swap one bad ingredient for another when they trimmed artery-clogging trans fats from products and menus, an analysis finds.
Even the French fry, a longtime dietary scourge, got a healthier remake. But there’s still room for improvement, particularly for some items sold in supermarkets, which replaced heart-damaging trans fat with its unhealthy cousin, saturated fat.
A Harvard researcher and a consumer advocacy group examined 83 foods that have had a makeover since 2006. That year, the federal government began requiring food labels to list the amount of trans fat in packaged products and New York City became the first of several cities to phase trans fat out in restaurants.
Items studied included margarine, junk food, baked goods and fast food from five popular chains.
Results were published in a letter in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Nearly all of the foods analyzed were free or mostly free of trans fat. And many companies and restaurants did not spike saturated fat when they cut trans fat — 65 percent of supermarket products and 90 percent of restaurant fare contained saturated fat levels that were lower, unchanged or only slightly higher.
“Companies almost always can reformulate their food to have a healthier balance of fats,” said Center for Science in the Public Interest executive director Michael Jacobson.
The researchers declined to provide details about the winners and sinners because they said they plan to publish the full results later. But they did give a few examples:
• Large order of McDonald’s French fries: Trans fat dropped from 7N grams to zero; saturated fat went from 5 1/2 grams to 3 1/2 grams.
• Entenmann’s Rich Frosted Donut: Trans fat went from 5 grams to zero; saturated fat more than doubled, from 5 grams to 13 grams.
The exit of trans fat from gluttonous foods doesn’t make them healthy, said Dr. David Heber, who heads the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition.
“Trans fat or not, a doughnut is still a doughnut. Even Homer Simpson will back me up on that,” said Heber, who had no connection with the research.
