Food Industry Ditches Trans Fats, Kids' Cholesterol Levels Drop
| Tue Aug. 21, 2012 3:00 AM GMT  "0 grams trans fats." That
promise appears prominently on packaging for that classic
American junk food, the Lay's Potato Chip. McDonald's iconic
French fries? Trans-fat free—as are its Chicken McNuggets.  It
wasn't always thus. As recently as 2006, journalist Nina
Teicholz could report that consuming a large order of McDonald's
fries and McNuggets in one sitting meant taking in nearly 10
grams of trans fats, a "substance considered so unhealthy that
the National Academy of Sciences concluded, in 2002, that the
only safe amount of trans fats in the diet is zero."  Trans fats
are made through a process known as partial
hydrogenation—basically, when you add hydrogen to ordinary
vegetable oil, it becomes solid at room temperature, making it a
cheap substitute for butter.  According to Teicholz, probably
the journalist most responsible for exposing the ill effects of
the once-ubiquitous, now-scarce substance, "A dail