The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday announced that the use of partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) — the major source of artificial trans fats in foods — is to be banned from July 2018.
Based on Article 17 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), the agency said it announced the health standards for edible hydrogenated oil on Sept. 7 last year and would allow a compliance period of three years.
Trans fats are formed during food processing when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil. The hydrogenation process can induce molecular structural changes in the fat and is used to improve its heat-resistance, shelf life and flavor, but at the same time it also creates trans fat PHOs, the administration said.
Administration official Kao Yi-ting (高怡婷) said that the US FDA in June last year announced that PHOs are not generally recognized as safe and set a compliance period of three years for companies to remove PHOs from processed foods.
As legislators in Taiwan have asked the government to set similar standards, the FDA decided to set the compliance date for July 2018, Kao said.
According to a US FDA fact sheet, there are two sources of trans fats: one that forms naturally and can be found in animal products, such as meat and dairy; and the other that forms during food processing — PHOs are the main source of this type of trans fats in the US.
The decision to designate PHOs as “not safe” and removing them from processed foods is “expected to reduce coronary heart disease and prevent thousands of fatal heart attacks each year in the United States,” it said.
A public document published by the Health Promotion Administration last year showed that when a person ingests about 4g to 5g of artificial trans fats per day, their low-density lipoprotein (LDL, “bad” cholesterol) increases and high-density lipoprotein (HDL, “good” cholesterol) falls, increasing the risk of developing cardiovascular disease by 23 percent.
PHOs can be found in a variety of food products, including baked goods like cakes, cookies and crackers; snacks such as potato chips, corn chips and popcorn; deep fried food such as French fries, fried chicken and doughnuts; refrigerated dough products like biscuits, cinnamon rolls and frozen pizza crust; and also in coffee creamer, stick margarine and ready-to-use frosting, the document said.
Kao said the three-year compliance period allows food companies to develop and reformulate products without PHOs, adding that after the ban takes effect on July 1, 2018, food products that are found containing PHOs will be in violation of the law and producers of such foods can be fined between NT$30,000 and NT$3 million (US$893.73 to US$89,373).
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