Article originally seen on Huffington Post here.
United States – there is a proposed ban on trans fats by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposal.
Bad news for microwave popcorn
This will be very bad news for all microwaveable popcorn products as they use this unhealthy type of oil in most of their products. Did you know that?
Apparently this oil has an extremely high cooking temperature that enables the popcorn to pop only once the bag has heated up and therefore the bag doesn’t become oily and unpleasant to handle.
As mentioned by the HuffPo. article, ‘The Popcorn Board, an industry trade group, said Americans munch 16
billion quarts of popped popcorn a year, and more than two-thirds of
that is eaten in the home.’
Trans fats are very unhealthy
Studies have shown that trans fats can affect your health negatively, in particular, they can raise your cholesterol and cause heart disease.
South Africa – the new proposed
draft Regulations on the Advertising and Labelling of Foodstuffs, R642 which
were published in the Government Gazette in July 2007 for public comments,
labelling of industrially produced trans fatty acids are addressed very
pertinently, although not banned. The
requirement is to indicate in the nutritional information table all
industrially produced trans fatty acids present in prepared foods.
The cold hard fact is, that trans fats are present in microwave popcorn and they are very unhealthy. I know I will think twice now when buying those convenient bags for a quick snack.
What do you think, will you carry on buying them? Or do you want them to remove those harmful trans fats?