Common sense prescribes that fats encountered naturally in the diet that we’ve been eating for hundreds of thousands of years are unlikely to be detrimental to health.

For instance, saturated fat (a fundamental food product if there ever was one) turns out not to have the heart-stopping attributes we’ve been admonished about for decades. Some naturally occurring fats such as omega-3 and monounsaturated fats appear to have health-giving properties.

One form of fats I recommend that individuals avoid is industrially produced trans fatty acids, a byproduct of partially hydrogenated fats.

These fats are unknown in nature and have just made their way into our mouths since the processing of vegetable oils. The hydrogenation of fats permits vegetable oils, such as sunflower and safflower oil, to be solidified, which is obviously important in the manufacturing of solid fats such as margarine. The other benefit of hydrogenation is that it makes fats less likely to turn rancid, which extends their shelf life.

The polyunsaturated fats that are the raw fabric for industrially produced, partially hydrogenated and trans fats are kinked and even coiled in shape. This physical form of fats is referred to as “cis” (pronounced “sis”) configuration. However, the moulding of these fats not only adds hydrogen but likewise can induce cis fats to straighten out, forming the trans configuration.

As expected, research suggests that industrially created trans fats have the potential for a wide range of unwanted health effects.

Trans fats have been linked to adverse effects on heart health. For example, in one study released in the August 2000 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, individuals who had had a heart attack were found to have significantly broader levels of trans fats in their bodies compared to healthy individuals.

Those with the highest densities of trans fat were found to be, on average, more than 2 1/2 times more likely to suffer from a heart attack than those with the lowest levels.

A number of other studies also support the concept that trans fats are bad for the heart. Of four studies that have examined this potential connection over time, three found that consuming just 2 percent of our calories from trans fat is associated with an increased risk of heart disease of from 28 to 93 percent.

These findings were published in July 1996 by Harvard Medical School in the British Medical Journal, November 1997, in the New England Journal of Medicine, and a Netherlands report in the Lancet in March 2001.

Trans fats appear to have the ability to impair the function of insulin, which would be expected to increase the chance of acquiring type 2 diabetes. This concern was proved in reports published in Diabetes Care in May l997 and in January 1999 in the journal Metabolism.

Other research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in June 2001 has found that in women, a steeper consumption of trans fat is affiliated with an exaggerated risk of diabetes.

The evidence indicates, as we would expect from primal theory, that industrially produced trans fats are thoroughly unhealthy.

In the U.K., we consume an average of about 2.5–3.0 grams of trans fats per person each day, according to research published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition in February 1999. This may not sound like very much, but studies establish that even very modest amounts of these fats are linked with an increased risk of disease.

In 2002, the U.S. Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine published a report on the role of trans fats on health and made recommendations regarding healthy levels of consumption. In the summary of this report, its authors suggest the “tolerable upper-intake level of zero.”

The untoward effects of trans fats and the benefits of removing them from the diet was recently highlighted in an editorial published in April in the British Medical Journal. In reaction to this article, a letter was published on June 16 in the BMJ:

“In numerous jurisdictions it is unlawful to render food injurious to health. For instance, the U.K. Food Safety Act, Section 7, states: “Rendering food injurious to health: (1) Any person who provides any food injurious to health by means of any of the following operations, namely—(a) appending any article or substance to the food; (b) employing any article or substance as an ingredient in the preparation of the food; …

“(2) In determining … whether any food is detrimental to health, regard shall be had—(a) not just to the likely effect of that food on the health of a person consuming it; but (b) also to the probable additive effect of food of substantially the same composition on the health of a person consuming it in routine amounts.”

The production of foods carrying damaging trans fats seems to be outlawed in the U.K. This opens up the possibility that legal action could be taken against food companies who manufacture these foods.

A class action suit by some rightly disgruntled consumers is a distinct possibility.