Marks &Spencer is to become the first big retailer to ban man made fats from its foods.
They have removed all hydrogenated fats from their meals and plan to eradicate them from all of their 5000 food lines by April 2006.
Hydrogenated fats are among the worst for health and are linked to heart disease, narrowing of the arteries and diabetes. Hydrogenated fats are believed to pose a significantly higher health risk than naturally occurring fats.
The move has been welcomed by food experts who claim it is long overdue in stores.
In Britain, the fats are widely used in biscuits, cakes, pastry, margarine and ready meals. The fast food company also makes wide use of hydrogenated oils for frying. There is no obligation to declare the fats on labels.
In America, many food companies have announced they are to stop using such fats. The US government has ordered companies to detail such fats on food packaging.
Nutritionist Dr Elizabeth Dowler said, “It is good to see companies making ready made meals conform more to the guidelines on healthy eating.”
She said, “The ingredients in such foods often confused shoppers and few had the time to scrutinise them. It’s very hard to know a lot about the ingredients in ready meals and there is a lot of trust in brands.
“Something that has a label like Weight Watchers, people will think that’s bound to be good but it might not always be the case. There are a variety of hydrogenated fats that may be listed on the back of meals, including vegetable, rapeseed oil or palm oil.”
The Food Standards Agency in Britain is considering a similar move, informing food manufacturers and retailers that they may soon be required to label all foods containing the fats.
The agency said, “These fats can raise blood cholesterol levels and increase the risk of coronary heart disease.”
Unfortunately, there are no legal requirements for food manufacturers to label trans fats and few choose to do so.
This means for now, you need to scour ingredients lists for hydrogenated fats or hydrogenated vegetable oils. If a product has either, it will almost certainly contain trans fats.
UK sales of ready meals reached a record £900million last year, up five per cent on 2003.
We need to beware also of high levels of salt in convenience meals, which can increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Of the 5,000 food lines sold by Marks &Spencer, 1,200 were, until recently, made with hydrogenated vegetable fats. By the end of this month, that should have been cut to about 700.
Guy Farrant, director of food at Marks &Spencer, said, “We have removed hydrogenated vegetable fats from our ready meals and we are now working to remove them from all our food products by mid-2006.”
These fats are created by heating natural fats such as soya or palm oil to more than 250C and then bubbling hydrogen through them. This turns the oil from a liquid to a dense waxy tasteless solid that improves texture, binds food particles together and prolongs food’s shelf life.
However, research has shown that hydrogenated fats shorten human life.
Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, London, welcomed Marks &Spencer’s decision. He said, “Why has it taken so long? Hydrogenated vegetable fats are uniquely bad for consumers in every way.”
Tesco and Waitrose have also promised to cut the use of such fats in own-brand food.
Jane Landon, associate director of the National Heart Forum, said the key question was what Marks &Spencer would use instead. She said, “They need to avoid replacing them with other forms of harmful fat.”
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