Revealing Hidden Fats

After a six year struggle with consumer advocates the FDA is considering a change to existing nutrition labels to include grams of trans fat per serving, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Kaledin.

For Jean Walsh, reading labels is a matter of life and death. Avoiding fat is critical to her health after surviving quintuple bypass surgery.

"The only way you can really find out is to read the box," she says.

But, nutritional labels don't say anything about trans fat, an ingredient doctors say is deadly.

Consumer advocates call it the phantom fat because most people have never heard of it and it's not found on product labels.

"Right now food labels only show one kind of artery clogging fat, saturated fat, but they don't give consumers any information about the other type of heart damaging fat-trans fat," says Margo Wootan of the Centers for Science in the Public Interest.

Trans fat is created when vegetable oil is solidified to make certain foods. Doctors say it has a similar effect in the arteries, clogging them up, and raising cholesterol levels.

Studies indicate that eating trans fat increases LDL-cholesterol, often called "bad cholesterol," which increases the risk of heart disease. At the same time, it decreases the amount of HDL -- the "good cholesterol" that is good for the heart.

"We estimate that more than 30,000 deaths from heart disease could be avoided each year if trans fats were eliminated," says Dr. Walter Willett of Harvard University's School of Public Health.

However, eliminating trans fats is difficult because they are found in almost any processed food at the grocery store. They are included in everything from low cholesterol margerines and whole grain crackers to cookies and cakes and frozen french fries.

"Its horrendous...I mean you know I think you should be aware of that kind especially if its worse than saturated fat," says Jean.

If the proposal goes into effect next year, an asterisk on food labels would indicate that trans fat is included, with a footnote telling consumers how many grams are in each serving.

Food manufacturers are concerned the change offers up a recipe for confusion.

But for heart disease patients like Jean Walsh making healthy choices would be a little easier.