•Health officials in Kenya are unanimous about the need to eliminate these fats.
•Consumers can tell if their foods have trans fats by looking for the words "partially hydrogenated" in the ingredient list.
Image: FILE
East Africa has been asked to adopt a regional law regulating trans fats to reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases in the region.
The call was made by non-profit International Institute for Legislative Affairs, which has been running a campaign to create awareness of the dangers of trans fats consumption in Kenya.
The region is likely to miss a deadline set by the World Health Organization five years ago to eliminate the killer fats from supply by end this year.
“The time for action on trans fats is now. The adoption of a regional regulation on trans fats will help to promote non-communicable diseases prevention and control, protect public health, and save lives. Policy makers must act with urgency to make this happen,” said IILA CEO Celine Awuor.
She spoke in Nairobi on Monday at a forum with journalists.
Most trans fats are formed through an industrial process that adds hydrogen to vegetable oil, which causes the oil to become solid at room temperature.
Manufacturers often use them as they have a longer shelf life than other fats. But healthier alternatives can be used that would not affect the taste or cost of food.
The campaign in East Africa is based on the WHO’s “Replace” guide to eliminate trans-fatty acids from the global food supply by 2023.
The WHO has proposed two policy alternatives to its member countries. The first is focused on limiting trans fat to a maximum of two grammes per 100 grammes of total fats in food. The second is to ban the production or use of partially hydrogenated oils, considered the most relevant source of trans fat.
"WHO calls on governments to use the Replace action package to eliminate industrially-produced trans-fatty acids from the food supply," WHO director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
"Implementing the six strategic actions in the REPLACE package will help achieve the elimination of trans fat, and represent a major victory in the global fight against cardiovascular disease."
No country in East Africa has a law prohibiting the use of trans fats in food processing. This has opened the door to high levels of trans fats in baked foods popular with the public, such as cakes and buns.
Awuor said the cost of inaction on trans fats is high in terms of both human and economic costs.
“Preventable NCDs are a significant burden on health systems and can result in lost productivity and increased healthcare costs,” she said.
Health officials in Kenya are unanimous about the need to eliminate these killer fats.
Dr Anne Nasirubi from the Ministry of Health’s Cardiovascular Disease Programme said trans fats — also called trans-fatty acids — raise bad cholesterol and also lower good cholesterol.
“They increase levels of low-density lipoproteins, the bad cholesterol, in the body,” she told journalists last year at a meeting organised by IILA. “This clogs arteries leading to increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.”
Internal medicine specialist Prof Gerald Yonga said trans fats result from hydrogenation, which is the conversion of liquid oil to solid fat at room temperature.
“The processing condition determines the occurrence of industrially produced trans-fats, not the physical state,” he said in the meeting last year.
Countries that have already banned trans fats include the US, Denmark, Austria, Iceland and Switzerland.
According to IILA, Kenya’s Legal Notice 115 of 2015 aims at imposing limits on the amount of industrially produced trans-fats in all food products.
It provides that for foods to be deemed free from trans fatty acids, they should contain the amount permitted in the Codex Alimentarius, which is a code of food standards for all nations.
“While this is a remarkable effort to eliminate trans fats in Kenya's food supply, it poses an implementation challenge because the Codex Alimentarius does not provide a specific ITFA (Industrially Produced Trans-fats) limit,” the organisation's policy brief presented to the government says.
Consumers can tell if their foods have trans fats by looking for the words "partially hydrogenated" in the ingredient list.
This means they have been turned into solids and trans fats are present.
However, makers of margarines and cooking oils can show zero grammes of trans fat if there are less than five grammes per serving, but evidence shows even small amounts are dangerous.
In Kenya, according to the global burden of diseases report in 2019, cardiovascular disease contributed 36 per cent of all deaths by non-communicable diseases.
The WHO says that globally, 500,000 deaths are caused annually by trans fats in common processed foods.