Trans fat is deceptively common in foodstuffs

• No doubt, you already know to eat certain kinds of fish for their "good" disease-fighting omega-3 fatty acids and to downsize the "bad" artery-clogging saturated fat in your diet by cooking with modest amounts of unsaturated fat like olive and canola oil, switching to skinny lattes and limiting red meat.
• But what you may not realize is that you should also be scrutinizing the processed foods you toss into your grocery cart and order on the go.
• That's because many of those foods -- French fries, microwave popcorn, some breakfast cereals, nondairy creamer, ramen noodles, margarine, baked goods and cake mixes, to name a few -- contain trans fats (aka trans fatty acids or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil), a stealth fat that has dethroned saturated fat as the diet's greatest evil, thanks to recent research.
• An independent 2003 expert report commissioned by the World Health Organization report also recommended limiting the consumption of saturated and trans fats to reduce the global burden of chronic disease, including heart disease and diabetes.
• To help consumers in the United States do just that, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made a ruling requiring food manufacturers to list the amount of trans fats a food contains on the label.
• For years, they were mysteriously absent, and even foods laden with the fat could be touted as fat-free because of outdated labeling laws.
• Enig suggests that trans fats may also be a carcinogen.
• "Because trans fats look like saturated fat to the body, they get into a spot where saturated fat should be and destabilize cell membranes to aid the cancer process," Enig says.
• "It's difficult to find another fat that's cheap enough that will stand up to the heat of the deep fryer," says Kim Severson, author of "The Trans Fat Solution" (Ten Speed Press, 2003).
• Frito-Lay's line of Naturals is devoid of it.