BMJ  2006;332:931 (22 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7547.931-b

News roundup

Banning trans fatty acids will reduce risk of heart attacks, study says

Quebec David Spurgeon

Virtually eliminating the amount of trans fatty acids in industrially produced food could avert between 72 000 (6% of the total) and 228 000 (19%) coronary heart events each year in the United States, a new US and Dutch review study concludes (N Engl J Med 354;1601-13).

The amount of trans fats in packaged snack foods, bakery products, deep fried fast food, margarine, and packaged snacks such as tortilla chips increases consumers’ risk of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and sudden death from cardiac causes, say the researchers, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

“The evidence and the magnitude of adverse health effects of trans fatty acids are in fact far stronger on average than those of food contaminants or pesticide residues, which have in some cases received considerable attention,” . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?




Doc2Doc Vacancy
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student 

BMJ