Trans fat are only found one place in nature: animal fat. However, the food industry found a way to synthetically create trans fats by restructuring the atoms in vegetable oil through a process called hydrogenation that causes them to behave more like animal fats.

But animal products only contain 1-5% trans fats, so what’s the problem? The Food and Nutrition Board within the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the most prestigious body of science in the United States that governs dietary reference intakes (DRIs), concluded that the only safe amount of trans fats is zero. In fact, they would not even set an upper limit for trans fatty acid consumption, concluding, “any incremental increase in trans fatty acid intake increases coronary heart disease risk.”¹

Because of hydrogenated vegetable oils, trans fat is found in certain processed foods that have been shown to increase the risk of coronary heart disease.²

In June 2015, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took trans fats off the list of Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) foods and have given food manufacturers three years to remove partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), which are the primary dietary source of artificial trans fat, but failed to recognize animal fats as the natural source of harmful trans fat despite the conclusive research that found trans fat intake, irrespective of source (animal or partially hydrogenated plant oils), increases cardiovascular disease risk, especially in women.³

WARNING! Just because the nutrition label on a product claims there is zero trans fat does not guarantee that it contains zero trans fat! The FDA’s labeling regulations allow foods containing less than 0.5 grams of trans fat to claim zero trans fat. Trans fats are simply unavoidable in non-vegan diets.⁴