A surprise U.S. Food and Drug Administration announcement on partially hydrogenated oil should substantially boost demand for high oleic canola oil, says a developer of the product.
The FDA issued a preliminary determination Nov. 7 that partially hydrogenated oils, the primary source of unhealthy trans fats, are not “generally recognized as safe” for use in food.
“It essentially takes trans fats out of the food supply,” said Dave Dzisiak, commercial leader of grains and oil in North America for Dow AgroSciences, which developed Nexera canola and markets its oil under the Omega-9 Oils brand.
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He said the FDA announcement caught everybody in the food industry off guard and seems like a fait accompli, even though it’s a preliminary determination.
“They don’t take that kind of action lightly,” Dzisiak said.
“I’ve never seen it before, so I think they’re pretty determined about what they need to do.”
A 60-day comment period on the preliminary determination will collect input on the amount of time that is needed for food manufacturers to reformulate their products to remove all artificial trans fats.
The FDA did not specify when the final determination would be made or how long it will take to remove the remaining trans fats from the U.S. food supply.
Many food manufacturers voluntarily removed trans fats from their formulations after 2006, when the FDA started requiring that the amount of trans fats in food products be included on labels.
Trans fat intake among U.S. consumers has declined 78 percent to one gram per day in 2012 from 4.6 grams per day in 2006. They are still found in products such as microwave popcorn, frozen pizzas, margarines and coffee creamers.
In the United States, a product is considered trans fat free if it has less than .5 grams of trans fats per serving. However, a bag of chips could have three servings, which would mean a consumer could be eating up to 1.47 grams of trans fats.
“You might be getting actually quite a bit of trans in your diet even though everything you’re buying says trans fat free,” said Dzisiak.
The soybean industry has lost 2.7 billion kilograms, or about one-third of its annual U.S. oil sales, to competing oil because of the move away from trans fats.
Dzisiak said the canola industry has picked up about one billion kilograms of that business, 90 percent of which has gone to high oleic canola oil.
“That reformulation has been a great boon to the Canadian canola grower,” he said.
Dzisiak estimates 900 million kilograms of trans fats are still consumed in the U.S. each year.
Canadian producers would have to plant another three million acres of high oleic canola, or about double today’s acreage, if food manufacturers replaced all of that partially hydrogenated soy oil with canola oil.
The American Soybean Association wants the FDA to delay implementing a final determination until 2016, when it will have ample supplies of its new high oleic soybean oil to be used in reformulations.
Growers planted fewer than 100,000 acres of high oleic soybeans in 2013. The soybean industry expects that to grow to 18 million acres by 2023.
It hopes to be producing 770 million kilograms of high oleic soybean oil by 2016, which would require about 3.4 million acres of the crop.
“Since it will take a few years to ramp up high oleic soybean production to provide an economical alternative to food processors, we believe any final FDA determination on the matter should reflect this time frame,” ASA president Danny Murphy said in a news release.
Dzisiak said the canola industry is in a better position to meet the growing demand for high oleic oil than the soybean industry.
Food manufacturers are comfortable with high oleic canola oil and have already incorporated it into their reformulations.
He said they know they can get a reliable supply of the product, consumers are becoming familiar with the canola brand and it has become a cost competitive ingredient because of all the new crush capacity in Western Canada.
“All of those elements come into play to make us a real preferred solution in this,” said Dzisiak.
