If you look on the labels of just about any type of baked goods in the grocery – cookies, crackers, etc. and you’ll find lots of trans fatty acids.

Associated Press

A mostly trans fat-free meal at KFC in New York. The company is frying its chicken and fries in trans fat-free oil, but they say they still haven't found a suitable substitute for their biscuits.

They are normally labeled as partially hydrogenated oils.

If you look up the ingredients on the fast foods you guy, just about every dish – including some hamburger buns – has trans fats in it.

Trans fats are put into foods to help increase their shelf life and some doctors contend that these fats lead up to 100,000 early deaths every year as they clog up arteries.

“It does have an effect, and I think we would be better off as a nation, as a country if we do pay more attention to labels and trans fatty acids,” said Dr. Gray Malcolm, a pathologist at the LSU Health Sciences Center.

Malcolm said doctors have been warning people about hydrogenated oils for decades.

“I was trying to get them to put it on the labels,’ she said. “I would say as early as sometime in the 70s. That’s how long it takes to make changes in this country.”

Malcolm said the trans fats could be even more artery clogging than the natural, saturated fats that occur in red meats.

He said he welcomes news that Kentucky Fried Chicken is joining Wendy’s as fast food outlets that are eliminating trans fats. KFC says it will now fry its food in soybean oil.

The FDA says most Americans consume about 4.7 pounds of trans fats a year and that without lifestyle changes, diabetes, obesity and heart disease will continue to worsen.

Malcolm suggests consumers look at the labels and drop the ‘hydrogenated oils’ in favor of foods that don’t have them.