**4. Discussion**

Industrially-Produced Trans fatty acid content in frequently consumed foods in Lebanon compared with different countries.

The available data, the first of its kind in Lebanon, demonstrate that categories with the highest IP-TFAs levels included *Riz a dajaj*, *Shawarma Lahma*, *Pain au lait*, *English cake*, *Chocolate wafers, and margarines.* About 93% of the products tested in Lebanon, between 2019 and 2021, met the WHO recommendations (less than 2% of Trans fatty acid in total fat), while about 7% exceeded the limit. As per Tables 1–3, all in all, EA was dominant in almost all the analyzed samples and its higher amount indicates that hydrogenated oils were a major contributor in the processing of food products or baking and cooking meals. In comparison to other countries all over the globe, a broad range of EA was observed in many food products (Table 4). For instance, the mean level of EA in Baklava (0.2%) was relatively low in our study in comparison with the content of EA in Baklava in Iran (2.5%) [25]. Furthermore, our findings showed that the mean levels of EA in cakes (2.6%) was much lower than the content of EA found in cakes in France (18.5–25.6%) [26], Iran (6.95–18%) [25–27], Poland (7.95%) [28], India (1.92–3.93%) [29], and higher than EA cake content tested in Lebanon in 2015 (1.7%) [30], Korea (1.36%) [31], Turkey (0.37–1.43%) [32], New Zealand (0.9%) [7], and Malaysia (<0.001%) [33] (Table 4). In addition, the mean levels of EA in biscuits in Iran (9–12.86%) [27], Lebanon 2015 (3.7%) [30], Poland (2.81%) [28], Korea (2.4%) [31], New Zealand (0.9%) [7], and Germany (0.18%) [34] were higher than our results (0.1%), except for Malaysia (<0.001%) [33] and India (0.01%) [29] (Table 4). As for the breakfast cereals, the mean level of EA in our study (0.1%) was much lower than in France (28.9–32.4%) [26] and Korea (0.5–6.75%) [31], and higher than in the UK (0.03%) [35] and Malaysia (<0.001%) [33] (Table 4). Moreover, our findings showed that the mean level of EA in chocolate wafers were six times more than EA content in chocolate wafers in Malaysia [33]. As for the butter, the New Zealand [7] and Costa Rican butter [36] contained five times more EA, and the Pakistani butter [37] contained three more times EA, compared with our results (Table 4). However, the butter in UK, Germany, and Iran contained 0.22% [35], 0.23% [34], and 0.3% [27] EA respectively; this is lower than the content of EA tested in our study (0.6%) (Table 4). Also, Table 4 showed that the margarines in Slovenia contained the highest content of EA (34.63%) [38] compared to our findings (2.2%) and other countries. As for the EA content in chips, Iranian chips showed the highest level of EA (10%) compared to our results (0.1–0.3%) and other countries [27] (Table 4). On the other hand, the results of LEA in the food products tested in our study and those in other countries are available in Table 4.
