Coronary heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Recently, you may have noticed all the products in the grocery stores claiming they have low - or no- trans fat. Requirements to list trans fat on nutrition labels was just approved by the FDA last year. Jeanne Struve says, “Just because something is low or no trans fat does not make it healthy.”

So what is trans fat? According to Jeanne “Trans fat start off as a vegetable oil, a good example would be Crisco vegetable oil, and right beside it is Crisco vegetable shortening, what they did is they take the oil and partially hydrogenate it and you ended up with the shortening. So it is a vegetable product but it is no longer healthy for you.”

Jeanne says that when the trans fat in a product is lowered, manufacturers typically will raise the saturated fat levels, which is fat that comes from animals. Both of these fats raise you cholesterol level, therefore raising you risk for heart disease. “Again you have to look at the nutrition fact label and the ingredients, don’t look at what’s on the front of the product, that is just a marketing thing, advertising just to get you to buy the product,”

You can buy your potato chips with no trans fat but that doesn’t make them any healthier than they were before. So remember to check the label before taking it off the table.

On average Americans consume nearly five times as much saturated fat as trans fat in their diets. Bread, cakes, and cookies contain the highest percent of trans fat.