A Food Lover's Guide To Fat

The FDA's new food-label regulations, which went into effect last May, did impose clarity on what used to be a jungle of meaningless terms. Now ""low fat'' (except for milk) means that the product has no more than three grams of fat per serving. A ""reduced fat'' product, such as mayonnaise, has to have at least 25 percent less fat than regular mayonnaise; a ""light'' mayo must have 50 percent less fat than regular. ""Fat free'' means less than half a gram of fat per serving.

But labels can still hide surprises. David Allison, associate research scientist at the Obesity Research Center of St. Luke's/ Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, ran tests on several foods to see if the labels were accurate. He found that national brands tended to give correct information but that locally made products went their own way. Some of the local muffins, frozen yogurts, candy and other foods had fat and calorie counts up to 85 percent higher than the labels claimed. People should use common sense, he says. ""Fat-free chocolate chips simply aren't possible.'' The FDA is now testing a random sample of 300 packaged foods to see if the labels are, in fact, telling the truth.

Another minefield for deception is food advertising, as last week's settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and Haagen-Dazs indicates. The ice-cream company had run ads describing its frozen-yogurt products as 98 percent fat-free. Down at the bottom in small type, the ads explained that only the yogurt-and-sorbet products were that low in fat. Other frozen-yogurt treats, especially the ones with chocolate or praline in them, were higher in fat. The company does not admit wrongdoing but has agreed to make its ads fully accurate from now on.

So Americans are eating just as much fat as ever?

Not quite. according to a recent survey by the National Center for Health Statistics, fat in our diet dropped from 36 percent of calories in 1978 to 34 percent in 1990. That statistic led to many an excited headline, but Marion Nestle, chair of the Department of Nutrition, Food and Hotel Management at New York University, is skeptical -- in part because Americans were also found to be consuming 231 more calories per person, per day. ""It's possible people really are eating less fat, and making up for it with more protein and carbohydrates,'' says Nestle. ""But there is a great deal of research showing that people commonly underreport food they know is bad for them and overreport food they know is good.'' A drop in blood cholesterol, from an average of 213 in 1978 to 205 today, reflects an undeniable decline in the consumption of such artery-clogging fats as beef and butter. But Nestle notes that the American food supply has more vegetable oil in it than ever before. That's the stuff used in fast food and junk food -- our staples. We don't necessarily consume it all -- some is wasted -- but it's likely that the drop in animal fat has been made up in vegetable fat. Leaving us -- fat.

If we ever do cut back on fat, will we lower the risk of breast cancer?