Everything About The Artificial Trans Fat Ban In S’pore Simplified For You

Does this mean that when I have a boob job overseas and came back, I’m not allowed in the country anymore?

Wait, wrong trans fat.

Fat in food is a pretty complicated subject. It’s so complicated that when researching the subject I got a headache and got even more confused.

People like to say that low-density lipoproteins (LDL) are “bad” cholesterol levels that lead to heart disease, but there are also people saying that LDL aren’t even cholesterol, and that hypothesis is wrong.

Yes, I know. Trans fat isn’t LDL/HDL. But what I’m trying to say is that saying that just because a food is fat doesn’t mean that it is bad.

So here’s the deal.

Don’t believe sciencey things I write

I only have about three hours to write this article, compared to the potentially decades of research scientists have to disprove each other’s hypothesis for the good of humanity. I’m definitely not a food scientist, so sometimes I don’t even completely understand what I’m writing.

You can say that I’m basically just a monkey randomly typing words here.

What I have instead is just a summary… of other people’s summary. Simplified for you because that’s what we do best.

And also, science isn’t all black and white. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Links will not be provided so that you don’t just believe the first study you see.

Fact: What is Artificial Trans Fat

Fats are mainly split into saturated and unsaturated fats.

Unsaturated fats, like canola, olive, sunflower oil, are supposedly healthier because they lower blood cholesterol. But they are liquid at room temperature, and so hard to use.

Artificial trans fats (ATF) are a variant of unsaturated fat. Partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) are ATF that is created by converting liquid oil to semi-solid fats.

ATFs were introduced to improve the texture and shelf life of food, while also cutting costs. And in a scummy move also allowed companies to declare food to be “cholesterol free”, a technically true term, but asshole marketing move since it doesn’t say anything about fat content.

Sciencey: Why ATF bad

Reminder to do your own research on this.

Short history:

• 1903: German scientist Wilhelm Normann patents process of creating artificial trans fat.
• 1960: Trans fat begins replacing animal fats in food.
• 1977: First research by UN & WHO show why artificial trans fat bad.
• 1990: New England Journal of Medicine study and a 1993 Harvard study show why it’s bad.
• 1993: UN/WHO joint experts once again tell people to eat less of that.
• 1995: BuffLord95 was born and now he’s working hard to remove fats from his body
• 2003: Denmark first country to ban trans fats.
• 2009: WHO suggests removing all artificial trans fat from the world.

You didn’t see that wrong. In 1977 people already thought PHO might be bad.

It’s like discovering a termite infestation in your home only to dismiss it because “lol I have other problems”.

ATF supposedly leads to increased low-density lipoproteins (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol levels, which was a risk factor for heart disease. There are studies associating 4g increase in daily trans fat intake to 23% increase of heart disease.

ATF also supposedly cause high-density lipoproteins (HDL) or “good” cholesterol to decrease. HDL is “good”, cause they clear “bad” cholesterol from the bloodstream.

Not all trans fat is “bad”, only artificial ones. There are supposedly no health benefits to ATF.

Fact: Artificial Trans Fats to be banned in S’pore from June 2021

I say fact, but I don’t even know what Artificial Trans Fats mean except you can rearrange the acronym ATF to become “FAT”.

More specifically, the Ministry of Health (MOH) will ban all partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) as an ingredient for all food in Singapore. So, no producing or importing of food with PHOs. PHOs are a key source of ATF.

How this is implemented is by amending the Sale of Food Act, and the Health Promotion Board (HPB) will be authorised to conduct checks on food.

Fact: Grants available to help companies

The time given until 2021 is for companies to find new formulas or sources for their products. Enterprise Singapore will even provide enterprise development grants to help companies do so.

6 enthusiastic companies, who actually has 50 per cent of market share in high-risk food categories snacks, baked goods, prepared meals and fat spreads, said they will make their product ATF free by June 2020, 1 year earlier:

• Gardenia Foods
• Nestle Singapore (currently 98.6% PHO free)
• NTUC FairPrice (currently less than 10% house-brand products with PHO)
• Prime Supermarket
• Sheng Siong Group (currently 125 house-brand products PHO free, about 1% in stock has PHO)
• Sunshine Bakeries

Fact: Singapore’s trans fat consumption

In 2010, our national average daily trans fat intake was 2.1g per person per day. In 2018, it is 1g.

Note that I have only said ARTIFICIAL trans fat to be “bad”, so I can’t tell you whether that is a good thing.

More than 90% of our trans fat consumption come from 4 categories of pre-packaged food:

• Fat spreads and creamers like peanut butter, 3 in 1 kopi
• Instant noodles and meals
• Baked stuff like cakes and biscuits
• Snacks like potato chips and popcorn

The remaining comes from products used in food service, like edible oils and margarine, which is already regulated by a limitation of ATF to no more than 2% of total fat content.

Opinion: Price how?

Mr Amrin Amin, the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Health said, “Based on our studies, we know there are enough alternatives (for PHOs) and so we do not expect price increases. And we have received feedback from retailers and assurances that prices will not be affected with this ban.”

I declare that I like fats. I want my fried chicken, my full-fat milk, ice cream, nasi lemak, croissants, to be full fat.

So I’ll be honest. There’s really no need to be quite scared since ATFs like margarine don’t taste as good as butter anyway.

At least until the government implements a ban on fat people and all fats, I feel pretty safe about taste.