New Trans Fat Free Oils: How Do They Taste?

The french fry is undergoing a massive makeover.
Right now, there’s a race to create a new generation of cooking and frying oils that
will replace all partially-hydrogenated oils, or PHOs, by 2018.
“But new Crisco oil splatters 40% less than other oils.”
Partially-hydrogenated oils have been an invisible mainstay in the American diet for decades.
They're in everything: french fries, pre-packaged dinners, all kinds of canned foods, microwaved
popcorn, and packaged baked goods that never seem to go bad.
But health researchers started to wave red flags as study after study
pointed to the dangers of trans-fat, which raises the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Some of the research came from the food industry itself, and it began finding ways to replace
all those PHOs.
By 2015, the FDA announced that food makers had three years to completely remove PHOs
from their products altogether.
This created a new opportunity for companies to create an oil that is low in saturated
fat, has no trans fat, remains stable when heated, and most importantly tastes great.
So we got our hands on three new oils that claim to do just that.
The new oils are Dow AgroScience’s non-GMO Omega-9 canola, DuPont’s Plenish
from GMO soybeans, and Monsanto’s Vistive Gold also from GMO soybeans all claim to taste
just as good—if not better, have no trans-fats, and contain lower levels of saturated fats
than olive oil.
The manufacturers of these new oils each think that theirs is the best tasting replacement
for the standard PHOs.
So we figured we’d test it out.
We asked 4 Bloomberg employees with discerning palates
“I am a profound french fry enthusiast I would say.”
To try 4 french fries.
3 fried in the new oils, and one fried in trans-fat.
To see if they could spot the which oil was trans-fat, and which—well—tasted like
french fries should taste.
“Solid crunch, good texture.”
“Like to me, what makes a great french fry is a crispy, though not hard outside, and
like a lightly soft, but not too like mushy interior.”
We did the same with these boxed brownies for a baking application.
Same brownie mix, same eggs, 4 different oils.
Nobody chose the trans-fat oil as their favorite overall.
“Like a potato that’s been spread with suntan lotion.
That was pretty gross.”
“I would not be happy with this fry.”
For the fries, Dow’s non-GMO canola oil was the clear winner.
“If you like the McDonald’s oily.”
“It does taste familiar, it tastes very fast foodish.”
With Plenish and Vistive Gold getting positive reactions.
For the brownies, there was no clear winner, but no clear loser.
“Yeah, all acceptable.”
“In the brownies the difference is almost impreceptible.”
While eating deep fried foods all the time will obviously never be healthy, the clear
winners here are consumers, who will get a healthier option without sacrificing flavor.

New Trans Fat Free Oils: How Do They Taste?

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