Nutrition Facts and Fatty acides

Question

Iam living in France, and I am having a difficulty understanding the label of nutrition facts. The following are two labels of two different products:

My problem is that I am unable to determine th amount of trans fats in my products. As it is indicated, the amount of fats in 100g of the product, then the amount of saturated fats. No indication is for unsaturated and trans fats. Would some one help me undertand how this work? How can I find the amount of trans fats. Some products are surely containting unsaturated fats and trans fats and it is difficult to determine the amount of each.

Thakn you for any indication.

Answer 1

You cannot determine the amount of trans fats because the information is not there. Trans fatty acids are a particular type of unsaturated fatty acids. More specifically, "unsaturated fatty acids that have at least one double bond in the trans configuration". So the amount of trans fats can be anywhere between 0 and the amount of unsaturated fats, which you can obtain by subtracting the amount of saturated fats from the total fats. Hopefully closer to 0. A way to go if you are concerned about trans fats would be to look at the list of ingredients, and avoid partially hydrogenated fats and oils. Rather high amounts of trans fats are also found in dairy and beef fat (3-6% of total fatty acids) 1. Some are also formed when frying oils at high temperatures.