[Foodplanning] Feature: Cutting Trans Fats Calls for Innovations In Soy Bean Design

[Ashwani Vasishth]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7032259

Health & Science
To Cut Out Trans Fats, You'll Need a Better Soybean

Listen to this story... by Scott Horsley

Illustration Omitted:
  	French fries close up.  Why Do Fries 
Taste So Good? A Brief History [See below]

Illustration Omitted:
  	The deep fryers of the dining halls at Iowa State.  Scott Horsley, NPR

Illustration Omitted:
  	For the last two years, "low-lin" soybean 
oil has been used in the deep fryers of the 
dining halls at Iowa State University. The school 
has found that trans-fat-free oil lasts twice as 
long as old-fashioned hydrogenated oil.

Illustration Omitted:
  	Iowa State University plant breeder 
Walter Fehr keeps specialty soybean oils in his 
office for "encouragement." Soybeans supply 
nearly 80 percent of all the oil used for cooking 
and baking in the United States.

All Things Considered, January 26, 2007 · Across 
the country, restaurants are under pressure to 
get rid of trans fats, which are made when 
hydrogen is added to vegetable oil; a July 
deadline looming in New York City. But it won't 
be easy to find a healthier cooking oil that can 
be produced at the scale needed to supply 
national chains and also hold up to extended use. 
The search begins in the soybean fields of the 
Midwest.

Nearly 80 percent of all the oil used for cooking 
and baking in this country comes from soybeans. 
But in their natural state, soybeans have a 
problem: a high concentration of linolenic acid, 
which makes their oil spoil quickly.

"It just doesn't have the shelf life that you 
would like to have in products," says Walter 
Fehr, a professor of agriculture at Iowa State 
University who has devoted most of his career to 
breeding soybeans for tofu, soy milk and 
especially oil. "And that's the reason that they 
switched many years ago to hydrogenation."

Stays Good LongerŠ But Not So Good for You

Hydrogenation extends shelf life. In the last 
century, the original Crisco and other partially 
hydrogenated oils became popular because they 
offered a lot of advantages. They make fried food 
crispy. They can be used over and over again. And 
they're inexpensive. But partial hydrogenation 
also creates trans fats, which are now known to 
increase levels of bad cholesterol. That's why 
Fehr has been busy breeding a soybean that 
doesn't need hydrogenation to stay fresh.

After decades of conventional breeding, Fehr 
developed a line of soybeans that have just 1 
percent linolenic acid. But breeding these 
"low-lin" soybeans was only half the battle. Fehr 
also had to find farmers willing to grow the 
soybeans and processors willing to squeeze the 
oil out of them. Finally, he had to prove to 
restaurants that low-lin soybean oil would work 
in a large-scale, commercial environment.

Iowa State's residential dining halls have been 
cooking their French fries in Fehr's low-lin oil 
for the last several years, using fryers just 
like the ones in fast-food restaurants. Dining 
hall manager Erica Bierman says in head-to-head 
performance tests, the trans-fat-free oil 
actually lasted twice as long as old-fashioned 
hydrogenated oil.

"We noticed that we didn't have to change the oil 
every week," Bierman says. "We started to test 
how far we could hold the oil, and it ended up 
being about two weeks."

It's HealthierŠ But Does It Pass the Taste Test?

Another key consideration for restaurants is the 
texture and taste of food once it has been fried 
in oil. KFC rejected a trans-fat-free canola oil 
because it hid the flavor of the chicken's 11 
herbs and spices. McDonald's says it backed away 
from a trans-fat-free oil in 2002 because the 
French fries didn't taste quite right.

That's why food-processing giant Archer Daniels 
Midland employs a full-time "sensory panel" to 
test ingredients such as cooking oil before they 
go to market.

"Our research chefs work with our ingredients to 
develop recipes around them, to see how those 
ingredients will work," says Research Vice 
President Mark Matlock. "One of the really 
important things with food is it has to taste 
good. [For] consumers, it's better if it's more 
nutritious, but it has to taste good."

Matlock says ADM has been working on its own line 
of trans-fat-free oils for both restaurants and 
packaged-food companies. A test tube bubbling 
away in the company's laboratory bears the name 
of the doughnut chain Krispy Kreme. Matlock says 
it's just as well that food makers have not 
switched away from trans-fat-filled oils in one 
fell swoop. Given the amount of oil used 
throughout the country, he says, the industry 
needs time to adjust.

"If everybody banned trans all at once, it would 
create some shortages, potentially, of the 
naturally stable oils," he says.

Finding a Steady Supply of Tasty Oil

One of the biggest challenges for a company of 
McDonald's size is ensuring an adequate supply of 
oil. At the moment, there aren't enough low-lin 
soybeans to go around. If all the restaurants in 
the country were to make the switch, they would 
need about 12.5 million acres of soybeans - an 
area the size of Massachusetts and New Jersey 
combined. Last year, less than a million acres of 
the special soybeans were planted. The acreage is 
expanding, but raising the soybeans - and keeping 
them separate from ordinary beans - takes extra 
effort. And professor Fehr says that not every 
farmer is willing to do that.

"The farmer is going to be the one who decides 
whether or not this is going to work in soybeans, 
pure and simple," Fehr says. "And the challenge 
right now for the 2007 crop is whether enough 
farmers are going to be willing to grow these 
beans."

Farmers do receive a premium for growing low-lin 
soybeans. But this year, they might make even 
more money growing plain old corn, thanks to the 
growing demand for the gasoline additive ethanol. 
That presents a dilemma for growers like Dan 
Allen, who farms a few thousand acres in Iowa's 
Madison County.

"I don't think we've figured out what we're going 
to grow," Allen says. "With the profitability of 
corn increasing, they're going to have to pay 
some real dollars in order to buy the beans to 
fill their contracts."

The young low-lin soybean industry will only 
succeed if the price is low enough for 
restaurants - and high enough for farmers. Allen 
says when planting time comes in April, he'll 
grow whichever crop makes the most money. But 
he's crossing his fingers that the low-lin 
soybeans catch on.

After all, he says, "I eat French fries, too."

  * * *

Food
Why Do Fries Taste So Good? A Brief History

by Scott Horsley

The signature taste of fast-food fries came about as something of an accident.

Illustration Omitted:
  	The signature taste of fast-food fries 
came about as something of an accident. Stephen 
Walls

Finding a healthier cooking oil that still 
preserves that crispy, salty French fry goodness 
fast-food lovers crave won't be easy. But 
McDonald's - and the rest of the industry - has 
been through this before.

In fact, the signature taste of McDonald's fries 
came about as something of an accident.

By the 1950s, most other restaurants were using 
pure vegetable oil, partially hydrogenated to 
extend its shelf life. But the tiny shortening 
company that originally supplied McDonald's - 
Interstate Foods - was too small to afford 
hydrogenation equipment. So Interstate founder 
Harry Smargon turned to a centuries-old 
alternative: a blend of oil and beef fat.

As John F. Love wrote in his history, McDonald's: 
Behind the Arches, that beef-fat flavor would 
become the standard, not only for McDonald's but 
the rest of the growing fast-food industry.

"For reasons even he finds hard to explain, 
Smargon insisted that Interstate's shortening 
blend produced a crisper and more flavorful 
French fry than one cooked in all-vegetable 
shortening," Love says.

McDonald's founder Ray Kroc agreed. And that 
beef-fat blend dominated until the late 1980s, 
when fast-food companies were finally forced to 
switch to pure vegetable oil, out of concern that 
the saturated fat in beef tallow raises 
cholesterol. Even as they made the change, most 
restaurants tried to preserve the familiar 
beef-fat flavor of their French fries.

McDonald's, for one, continued to use essence of 
beef in its fries to retain some of the original 
flavor, though it failed to disclose it - 
prompting a lawsuit from vegetarians and Hindus, 
who consider cows sacred and don't eat beef.

But in switching to vegetable oil, fast-food 
chains also adopted the chemical process of 
adding hydrogen to the oil to extend its fry 
life. It's now known that the trans fats created 
by this partial hydrogenation are as bad for you, 
and possibly worse, than the saturated fats they 
replaced. Trans fats not only raise bad 
cholesterol levels, which increase the risk of 
coronary heart disease, but lower good 
cholesterol levels as well. As a result, 
McDonald's and other fast-food companies are 
under pressure to switch again.

In the meantime, some say a new generation of 
customers has grown accustomed to the taste of 
potatoes fried in partially hydrogenated oil.

"Right now, we get requests for a flavor profile, 
and we realize it's the minor components of 
hydrogenation that are imparting the flavor," 
says Research Vice President Mark Matlock of 
Archer Daniels Midland. "So they really want 
'hydro flavor' in their product."

Still, lessons from another fast-food staple 
offer hope for a healthy and tasty outcome. When 
KFC decided to eliminate trans fats, the company 
stuck with a soybean oil similar to what it had 
been using, but with one major change: It's not 
made from partially hydrogenated oil, the source 
of trans fats.

Gregg Dedrick, president of KFC, said their fried 
chicken's "flavor profile" was unchanged. KFC 
carried out in-store testing and let customers 
taste chicken cooked in both the previous oil and 
the new, healthier oil. The result? They couldn't 
taste any difference, Dedrick says.


Copyright 2007 NPR

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