Trans-fats: Your health and politics

Do you eat cakes, chocolate bars, ready meals or chips from a take-away? Who doesn't eat some occasionally? All those foods I mentioned and many others may contain high levels of compounds called trans-fats or trans-fatty acids.

The reason that trans-fats are important is because they cause much higher levels of heart disease - and yet we rarely hear about them. Trans-fats are an unnatural product of food processing. Vegetable oils are sometimes chemically treated by "hydrogenation" to give them a thicker consistency or they are purified at a high temperature. Food manufacturers do this to increase storage life of their products or to help the flavour last longer. Both these processes put a kink in the backbone of the molecules and change their shape.

You may not be able to see these fats in your food or tell the difference yourself but your body certainly can. What happens is that these strange-shaped molecules increase the deposits in your arteries and increase your risk of heart disease. It is thought that about 7,000 deaths a year in the UK are linked to trans-fats. To put that in perspective, about 3,000 people are killed every year on the roads and the government spends millions on road safety campaigns.

Currently there is no requirement to label trans-fat content on the package or bottle in the UK, so you just can't tell how much is there. By contrast the FDA in America introduced labelling in 2006.

So what can Liberal Democrats do about trans-fats? I think we can do quite a lot. Other countries like Denmark have banned trans-fats or are proposing to do so, as have New York and now California. Yet a few weeks ago our own government refused. The argument here is that the average amount of trans-fats people eat is less than the recommended level of 2% of energy intake. But many people over-indulge in things that aren't good for them. People often eat high levels of foods containing trans-fats, well above recommended intakes.

I'm asking our Liberal Democrat ministers in DEFRA and the Department of Health to look at this and press for a ban.

Even more than that, our own government and MEPs should be pressing for an EU-wide ban. We import large amounts of food across national borders and this issue affects many countries. The EU itself is sitting on the fence (much as the UK government is doing), not wanting to upset any apple carts with an outright ban.

I think we Lib Dems can make a difference. If you support this campaign, please email me at kaybarnard@gmail.com.

Kay Barnard is a Liberal Democrat member in Somerset and worked for many years as a research biochemist at the University of Bristol.

Webmaster's Comment

As a Food Technologist with over 50 years experince I have been banging on about this for some time - for the sake of your health and everybody else please support Kay