Things You'll Need:
- ability to read the nutrition label
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Step 1
Trans fat is consumed, on average, around 5.8 grams per day per consumer. Most of these grams are found in cakes, pies, bread, and cookies. However, it can also be found in other animal products, margarine, fried potatoes, corn chips, popcorn, shortening, salad dressings, cereals, and candy.
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Step 2
One thing you will notice when you look at the new food reference labels is that there is no Percent Daily Value (%DV) for trans fat. This is because there have been no scientific report that could determine the amount of trans fat that could be used as a daily value. Therefore, only the amount of trans fat in the product is listed. Label shopping is one of the best ways to limit your intake of trans fat. You can look at the %DV for saturated fat and cholesterol and choose items that are low in those. Under 5% DV is low and over 20% DV is relatively high...use this as a general guideline to your food reference label shopping.
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Step 3
The one place you should be safe from trans fat should be your vitamins, minerals, and other alternative health supplements. However, if you look, some of them do have saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol. With the new label requirement from the FDA if there is more than 0.5 grams of saturated fat, trans fat, or cholesterol then it will have to be listed in the label. There are other places that you may not be expected to see fats and cholesterol. Check out your energy bar or drink, or your nutrition and food replacement bars. These can include them as well.
