Hydrogenated margarines out – as ordered, waiting for price consequences
After Austria and Denmark, Hungary is the 3rd country in the European Union which regulate the amount of TFA (Trans-Fatty-Acids) able to be used in any kind of food. This regulation has been applied since the 18th of February.
Trans-fats get produced when vegetable oils are hardened into margarine and get used into bakery products, packed items or fast foods.
The biggest problem with this constituent is the fact that it increases the level of LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein) – also called „bad cholesterol” and lowers the level of HDL (High Density Lipoprotein) at the same time – which is the good one. This molecular behaviour effects human health badly, it can cause high blood pressure, artery closure, diabetes, several sort of heart diseases. This is the most unhealthy fat acid.
According to a statistic, average 1000 deaths/year can be linked back to overdosed TFA-input in Hungary, so some kind of standards had been expected earlier.
On the other hand of expactations, from business aspects, the non-hydrogenated margarines (comes eg. from some sort of tropical vegetables) are with 10-12% more expensive than the TFA-versions – claims József Werli, General Secretary of the Hungarian Baker Association.
Instead of using the inland variants they often have to import the „approved ones” from other continents.
The TFA-content of packed foods (including chocolate bars, biscuits, salted crackers) and the retail types of margarines had been all lowered significantly (but not all of them lowered under the new threshold limit!) during the years to fit in the recently promulgating regulation, but not really the industrial area meaning the bakery products. Their ready-made products often contains multiple amount of the regulated 2 grams (per day) of TFA. We can admit that they are really not the ones we digest the quickestly.
According to the statistics of OÉTI (National Institute for Food and Nutrition Science), we had been eating 5-6 grams of TFA per day until the new regulations. And we will keep this average for a while, because of the expiry dates of already-packed items: they are allowed to sit in the shelves at longest till February of 2015. Of course, we can predict that the price increase of the items will not be abruptly but smoothly enlarging.
We have to also think of the prices of the widely consumed bakery products. The cheap industrial fats are the main concerns here, which sometimes contain 5 or 10 times more TFA than regulated! If you own a bakery, you cannot get this level down to threshold unless you get rid of them and find alternative margarine solutions.
As mentioned above, it will additionally costs plus 10-15 %.
We can sum up that the prices of bakery products will definitely tend to be increased more, especially when it comes to a price rise for energy fees; flour or other ingredient taxes.
They may include the additional costs of the newcomer, government-stamped margarines.
Written by -KK-
based on the articles of agrarszektor.hu, egeszseg.hu and the researches of oeti.hu
Source: https://darkgoldenrod-woodcock-377971.hostingersite.com/