Waverley Council gets good oil on fats

Waverley Council is looking to ban synthetic trans-fatty acids and saturated fats in new cafés, restaurants and takeaway outlets in a push for community health.

Mayor Sally Betts said the fats are known to increase bad cholesterol and decrease good cholesterol, and the council is looking at placing conditions on development applications for food outlets to prohibit their use.

“Our community’s health is important and we will do everything we can to ban these types of fats within our municipality,” she said.

The council is working in conjunction with the Heart Foundation’s Healthier Fats project. Last year Kogarah Council stepped up its laws, becoming the first council in Sydney to ban the fats.

Medical experts say the body’s cells cannot dispose of trans fats and this can lead to obesity, heart disease and liver failure. Saturated fats should also be avoided, as they can raise cholesterol.

Some international health experts question whether the use of saturated fats is as bad as people think. Professor JB German wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that after “50 years of research, there was no evidence that a diet low in saturated fats prolongs life”. He cited France and Finland as countries with a high saturated fat intake but said their mortality rates from Coronary Artery Disease were very low. “It is not that the prior studies were wrong, but their implications have been broadened inappropriately,” he wrote.

But the Heart Foundation’s food supply policy manager, Barbara Eden, said there was good evidence that increased consumption of saturated fatty acid was associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease.

“There are several key large secondary prevention trials, like the Lyon Heart Study, that shows a decrease in cardiac deaths with lower saturated fat intakes and higher unsaturated fat intakes,” she said.

Ms Eden said it also depended on what kinds of fats were used as some increase LDL (bad cholesterol), and some increase HDL (good cholesterol).

In Australia food companies and restaurants are not legally required to list trans fats on their products or menus, leaving consumers in the dark about what they are actually eating.

More information at www.heartfoundation.org.au

– By Ben Storey