By David Liu, PHD

Sunday March 18, 2012 (foodconsumer.org) -- If you have become more impatient or easier to be irritated than ever before, you may have eaten too much trans fat or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, a study published recently by PLoS ONE suggests.

Trans fat is commonly used in processed foods like baked and fried foods, and restaurant-prepared food even though its use is on the decline.  Because of the safety concern, many food companies/restaurants have limited their use of trans fat.  For instance, McDonalds' and Pizza Hut now avoid using trans fat in at least a majority of products.  Tyson Foods stopped using trans fat years ago.

Beatrice Golombat the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine conducted the study of 945 adults and said "We found that greater trans fatty acids were significantly associated with greater aggression, and were more consistently predictive of aggression and irritability, across the measures tested, than the other known aggression predictors that were assessed."

Adverse health effects of trans fat have been associated with metabolic malfunction, insulin resistance, oxidation, inflammation, and cardiac health.  Intake of trans fat is involved in more than 100,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease each year in the United States, according to Harvard researchers.

Food consumers should be aware that just because the nutrition label says zero trans fat does not necessarily mean that there is actually zero grams of trans fat in the food. It simply means that trans fat is below 0.5 grams per serving.  Because food manufacturers decide the size of one serving, foods with high levels of trans fat can still be labeled as zero trans fat.  Read the ingredient list to see if your food contains partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (trans fat).