Trans fat

Key facts

• Trans fat, or trans-fatty acids (TFA), are unsaturated fatty acids that come from either industrial or natural sources.
• More than 278 000 deaths each year globally can be attributed to intake of industrially produced trans fat.
• Trans fat clogs arteries, increasing the risk of heart attacks and deaths.
• Industrially produced trans fat can be found in margarine, vegetable shortening, Vanaspati ghee, fried foods, and baked goods such as crackers, biscuits and pies. Baked and fried street and restaurant foods often contain industrially produced trans fat. Trans fat can also be found naturally in meat and dairy foods from ruminant animals (e.g. cows, sheep, goats). Both industrially produced and naturally occurring trans fat are equally harmful.
• Industrially produced trans fat can be eliminated and replaced with healthier fats or oils without changing cost, taste or availability of food.
• WHO’s recommendation for adults is to limit consumption of trans fat to less than 1% of total energy intake, which is less than 2.2 g per day for a 2000-calorie diet.

Overview

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality in the world. Major risk factors are unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, tobacco and alcohol use. Among other dietary factors, high intake of trans fat increases the risk of death from any cause by 34%, coronary heart disease deaths by 28%, and coronary heart disease by 21%. Trans fat has no known health benefits.

Trans fat is produced industrially by the partial hydrogenation of any liquid oils, in most cases vegetable oils, but also occurs naturally in meat and dairy products from ruminant animals. For a healthy diet, the recommended intake of trans-fats is less than 1% of total energy. Industrially produced trans fats are not part of a healthy diet and should be avoided.

Governments have a central role in creating healthy food environments that enable people to adopt and maintain healthy dietary practices and must encourage reformulation of food products to reduce trans fat, with the goal of eliminating industrially produced trans fat. WHO developed a REPLACE action package that supports governments to design and implement a policy to eliminate industrially produced trans fat from their food supply.

Information presented on this page has been replicated from the linked WHO fact sheet. Please always refer to the original source on who.int for the latest version. Last update: March 2024