POPULAR PRE-PACKAGED foods on the Irish market have low levels of trans fats but high levels of saturated fats, according to a study published today by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI).
The findings have prompted the FSAI to issue a warning to the food-processing industry against replacing artery-clogging trans fats with equally harmful saturated fats.
The FSAI fat-profile survey of 100 popular pre-packaged foods included vegetable spreads, frozen pizzas, dried soups and gravies, cakes and biscuits. All were products that had been shown in previous studies to contain artificial trans fats.
Trans fats are produced when vegetable oils are converted into solid fats such as in margarines and shortenings. Like saturated fats, they have been linked to heart disease.
The survey indicates that 57 per cent of the foods surveyed contained no detectable trans fats and 23 per cent contained low levels of trans fats. Twenty per cent of products surveyed had high levels of trans fats (more than 2 per cent of total fats were trans fats).
The results, according to Dr Wayne Anderson of the FSAI, come "as a surprise", and confirm that the food industry has responded to scientific evidence and growing public concern about trans fats by lowering amounts of trans fat in food.
This news is encouraging, according to Dr Anderson - however, he expressed concern about the high levels of saturated fats in the products surveyed.
The study found that over one-third of products surveyed contained more than half of their fat in the form of saturated fats. These levels "present a risk to heart health and are a public health concern", said Dr Anderson. While there is no firm evidence that the food sector is replacing trans fats with saturated fats, the fact that many products surveyed had low trans fat content but high saturated fat levels was worrying, he said.
It would be "counter-productive for consumers if food companies were removing hydrogenated oils containing trans fats from their products, only to replace them again with saturated fat alternatives", he said.
"New technology has provided healthier alternatives to hydrogenated oils containing trans fats and the food industry needs to be creative in its efforts to reformulate foods," he added.
According to the survey, dried gravy and dried soup had the highest levels of trans fats.
Of the food surveyed baked foods, frozen pizzas and cheese and butter had the highest levels of saturated fats.
The study also cast doubt over the commonly held belief that hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil on an ingredients list indicates the presence of trans fats.
While dried gravies and soups containing hydrogenated oils had the highest concentrations of trans fats in the survey, almost seven out of 10 products, declaring hydrogenated oils as an ingredient, were actually low in trans fats.
Getting your fat facts right, pages 6-7