No wonder Morgan Spurlock felt so ill after pigging out on McDonald鈥檚 fast food for a month in his film Super Size Me. Maybe it was the trans fatty acids: artery-cloggers that have now been found in large amounts in French fries and fried chicken from McDonald鈥檚 and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets worldwide.
In fact, in half of the 43 restaurants visited by Steen Stender of Gentofte University Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, and his colleagues, more than 5 grams of trans-fats was found in a meal of 171 grams of fries and 160 grams of chicken 鈥� a level estimated to raise the risk of a heart attack by 25 per cent if consumed every day.
鈥淭he answer is simply to switch to cooking oils free of trans fatty acids鈥�
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Twice that amount was found in fries and chicken nuggets from a New York McDonald鈥檚, the highest level found in any McDonald鈥檚 outlet, while the most trans-fat-laden KFC meal was from Hungary, with 24 grams (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 354, p 1650).
Since levels of trans-fat in the food tallied closely with levels in the cooking oil used for frying them, the researchers say the answer is simply to switch to oils free of trans-fats. Doing this took only three months in Denmark, which banned the sale of food products containing more than 2 per cent trans-fats in 2004. Both McDonald鈥檚 and KFC say they take the issue of trans-fats seriously and are experimenting with new cooking fats to get levels down.
