Law or No Law, It's Wise to Avoid Too Much Fat

That puts canola oil alongside plant-based fats that help lower blood cholesterol levels and are now found increasingly in margarine-like spreads. Since all fats are high in calories, though, the health claims come with a caveat. As the FDA noted, canola oil should not be added to a diet, but rather should replace "a similar amount of saturated fat in the diet without increasing calories."

Lean Plate Club member Andy Dalal, who is keeping a video blog for the Holiday Challenge, is already careful to use a tub margarine -- Promise -- that contains no trans fat. Once a major source of trans fat, most margarines have been reformulated since Jan. 1, when the FDA began requiring food manufacturers to list trans fat grams on product labels.

But there's still a small loophole: Foods with 0.5 grams of trans fat or less per serving can list zero grams on the label. So products that show "partially hydrogenated oil" on their labels still contain some trans fats.

Switching to healthier fats can make a big difference, as Lichtenstein and her colleagues reported in November at the American Heart Association's annual meeting. They studied 19 women, age 50 and older, who had slightly elevated blood cholesterol and other unhealthy blood fats. Replacing the women's partially hydrogenated soybean oil with corn oil significantly cut total blood cholesterol and levels of the dangerous low-density lipoprotein.

Diane Standiford, a Lean Plate Club member in Vienna, (see her video blog at http://www.leanplateclub.com), is doing something similar: putting a little olive oil instead of a dressing with trans fats on the salads that she's started to eat during the Holiday Challenge.

Lean Plate Club Melanie Miller (watch her at http://www.leanplateclub.com) sautees broccoli and cauliflower in a little vegetable oil for lunch. She also sometimes treats herself to another popular food containing healthy fat: dark chocolate. That's a good source of stearic acid, a heart-healthy fat. But she learned this week that it's easy to go overboard. During a stressful day at work, she ate 12 Hershey's chocolate kisses -- and then quickly got back on track by having a light dinner.

Peanuts are another source of healthy fat that may have some additional benefits: A series of studies at Purdue University suggests that substituting peanuts and peanut oil for other fats has a small effect in increasing satiety without resulting in the expected weight gain from eating them regularly.

As the saying goes: Everything in moderation. ·