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US FDA Moves To Ban Trans Fat
UnknowingFool writes "Citing growing health concerns about trans fat, the FDA today proposed measures to eliminate it from the U.S. food supply. While trans fat can still be used, the new measures now place the burden on food processors to justify the inclusion of it in a food product as experts have maintained that there is no safe level of consumption and no health benefits. Since 2006, the amount of trans fat eaten by the average American has declined from 4.5g per serving to less than 1g as restaurants and the food industry have reduced their use of it. There will be a 60-day public comment period for the new proposal."
TFA is more specific than the brief above describes.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Since 2006, the amount of trans far eaten by the average American has declined from 4.5g per serving to less than 1g
Are we thinner yet?
...does it give the federal government the power to ban food or food ingredients?
Especially if the food in question does not cross state boundaries, and thus should not be subject to the interstate commerce clause?
Trans fats appear naturally in small amounts in things like cream.
Cream, being mostly saturated, zero carb and choc full of fat soluble vitamins is a very healthy food.
There is plenty of reasonable hypothesis that the small amount of trans fats in milkfat has a hormetic effect. It is the bulk trans fats in engineered foods that is toxic.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Next thing you know the only restaurant available is Taco Bell and Aunt Bea is copping a squat in back struggling with the three seashells.
Why not targeting high fructose corn syrup instead?
It is far more harmful and sugar is a better (albeit pricier) replacement.
You mean I'll not be able to buy any more beef tallow pudding? I eat that stuff by the spoonful!
So either make a requirement that all food additives follow guidelines to provide "safe levels of consumption and health benefits" or let consumers and corporations work it out on their own. Targeting individual food products is as productive as targeting individual financial products or individual companies in regulation. It just creates more work ... oh; nevermind, figured that out.
If people want to eat trans fats that should be their choice.
Smoking = tax money
Trans fats = no tax money
Debate over.
There's no significant health benefits to smoking tobacco either, but that's still perfectly legal
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Ban HFCS instead.
Trans fats are stable and solid at room temperature. This is desirable in a food product. Trans fats are horrid, but they may or may not be more horrid than whatever comes along to replace them. The real solution is for the US government to stop subsidizing processed food by making corn and soy artificially cheap. As long as McDonald's is cheaper than quality vegetables, people will continue to eat garbage.
Begs the question: what are they replacing it with?
It's not enough that we tell people what they eat may be bad for them, now we enforce it.
Presumably, you can still produce your own trans fats for your own personal consumption.
Vegans have diets that are so low in the LDL (bad) cholesterol that they can be too low. It turns out that you need some LDL cholesterol, or you bleed to death. It is only "bad" when you have too much of it.
Humans can produce their own LDL, but for some people that is not enough and they need dietary LDL. Partially-hydrogenated oils provide that need without requiring a vegan to eat any animal products.
Vegetarians who eat milk, eggs, or fish don't have this problem. But vegans do.
Of course, it is also true that a lot MORE people are dying of heart disease because of too much LDL than are dying of anything because of too little, so I think this battle is up a very steep hill.
It's not enough that we tell people what they eat may be bad for them, now we enforce it. How long before meat is banned? Sugar? Fat? Salt?
Yeah I think it is unfair that ChiChis was run out of business. If people want to eat hepatitis A tainted food, they should be allowed!
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It's not enough that we tell people what they eat may be bad for them, now we enforce it. How long before meat is banned? Sugar? Fat? Salt?
I tend to agree with this in principal yet as it stands consumers are denied the ability to know how much trans fat is in the shit their eating due to the infamous 0.5g/serving threshold loophole.
Either change labeling laws or get rid of the shit. Changing labeling laws would essentially have the same effect anyway I suspect.
We're all socialists whenever it benefits us. Do you favor zoning laws that set minimum parking requirements instead of allowing store owners to decide how many parking spaces to provide for their own customers? If so, then you are a socialist, even if you are able to rationalize such laws.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Should we not ban something that is directly linked to an increased risk in heart disease?
No, we shouldn't. The purpose of government is not to protect people form themselves.
+1 Funny (demolition man reference)
The ban will be against artificial hydrogenated oils.
Food processors will change over to oils like coconut, palm kernel oil, and animal based oils because they can be solid at room temperature,
My wife has a severe allergy to palm based oils making it difficult to shop in the grocery store. Every couple of months we find something else she can not eat because ingredients on the label have changed
So? Some laws makes sense. That doesn't mean ALL laws are good and we should open the flood gates.
This is pretty specific. We are talking about a low cost additive with known health risks and no shortage of drop in replacements. This is really more of a food safety issue then anything else, similar to requirements around cleanliness in food manufacturing plants or not allowing lead pipes for potable water.
Jesus Christ. The guy you were replying to was being sarcastic (like a 5 year old child). He's a Big Government stooge, just the way you like your stooges. So you two are in violent agreement.
This is fuckin stupid. Fuck freedom. Thank you government for thinking for me, right, wrong or indifferent.
Not mention Police Departments, Fire Departments, Highways, etc.
Totally the same thing, Jeeves. What next from your ilk, a Cyanide reference?
Yeah, like turr hurr, if people want cyanide laced Tylenol they should be able turr hurr!
Shut the fuck up. Trans fats are nowhere near as dangerous as people claim, they can be safely consumed in moderation and actually make many baked goods taste better.
You can safely consume trans-fats, you can't safely consume Hep A. The FDA's job is not to be our health watchdog. If it were, they'd ban all sorts of things people get obese or sick from when eaten to excess.
Ohhhh boy, and here comes ReichStagFred88 to goose-step all over internet jokes.
.5/g per serving of Trans-fats will not hurt you. Silly point.
Especially the low GI ones such as sugar and maple syrup. That shit is worst than crack cocaine for your health.
Everyone blames fats for all health problems but it makes no sense.
A human being cannot live without proteins, cannot live with fats but can live absolutely fine without carbohydrates. Some human populations such as the Inuits have been doing it since forever.
It's been 4 years since I have lived in a constant state of ketosis except for the eventual family/close-friends party/dinner where I have to eat a cake or a pie or else everyone says I'm a party booper.
My health indices are perfect, literally perfect. People ask me if I'm a model because of my shape and low body fat.
But no, people say I'm wrong cause I adopted a low carb way of life.
Yes, this is a rant. Point being: Fuck carbs.
With the trend toward government medicine, politicians now have a whole new reason to push their tastes on us for our health. This trend will only continue, under the usual reasons:
I'd rather see limits on sodium, since it's overloaded into everything from dough to freezer meals. Try cutting back on it, and you'll suddenly see it everywhere.
Unlike the farmers lobbying for HFCS, including their attempt to rename it Corn Sugar!
(And yes, I know the jury is still out on whether HFCS is actually worse than Cane or Beet sugar.)
Regardless, I'd like the amount of added sugar in most foods to be reduced too. (Used to add flavor after reducing the fat that originally gave it flavor.) Think we'll ever see it?
Way to discriminate against transpeople.
I am outraged on behalf of the LBT community.
That depends, how many servings are you having?
Well informing is not the same as banning. I don't mind the former, but the latter encourages a nasty anti-liberty path. There's a huge list of foods and foodstuffs the leftists would love to ban and/or ultratax. I don't want these soccer mom associations deciding limits on my freedom. As long as the packages are clearly marked, I can make my own decisions.
Awww, shnookums is cwanky.
And that should be second behind any Monsanto GMO crap.
Liberalism is about letting individuals be as free as possible. Liberals won't try to live your life for you. That is typically something socialists, communists, conservatives and christian democrats would try to do.
.5/g per serving of Trans-fats will not hurt you. Silly point.
There is no basis for such conclusions without first knowing how many "servings" would normally be consumed.
Serving size is completely arbitrary some have been intentionally reduced to avoid having to put a number other than 0 in the trans fat column.
This has the effect of the consumer being lied to about the nutrition of the shit their eating.
This is the most intelligent and least inflammatory comment on this article. Thank you for your insight.
Trans fats do not make food taste better. Fats do, but trans fats offer no advantage there and have a much bigger downside.
At least in the USA, that's an obsolete definition.
It's usually called 'classic liberal' or 'libertarian' these days.
Liberals in the USA are the party of big government and hate freedom.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
.5/g per serving of Trans-fats will not hurt you. Silly point.
lets say eating an oreo cookie is 0.2/g and they define a serving as 2 cookies. Then oreas are sold in "lunchable snack packs" containing 6 cookies.
So kid gets 3 servings of cookies get's 0.2*6 = 1.2g of transfat, parents think they haven't had any yet. Then the same thing happens in half the things in the sandwich, the other desert, and 3 other meals the kids eat. So tracking by label you've eaten 0, while tracking what was actually in the food you ate gives you 28grams per day...
Of course oreo's says they don't use transfat anymore at all, so its just a theoretical example.
But the point stands, if its not labelled, you don't know what is there. We can argue the merits and amounts of anything that is 'good or healthy', but its shocking that there is any legitimate reason to argue about labeling. Things should be labelled. Period.
And if a company doesn't want to label something, that's a red flag that they probably should be labeling it.
I've got 8 tablespoons per stick waiting for you and I've got six sticks per package! My freezer has hundreds of packages. Come knocking on my door and there are going to be hot cookies waiting for you waiting to take you down! Eat them at your own risk!
It's worse, people are cottoning on to this, it's fucking addictive poison which wreaks havok on the body in a biochemical sense.
Transfats certainly aren't "the good fats" but people aren't getting as fat from fat than they are sugar.
Dumbasses
I've been told that trans fats are very bad and saturated fats are bad. What I've wondered is: if I'm going to eat something bad, and one of my options has a lot less saturated fat but a little more trans fat, how do I decide if this option is the lesser of the evils. At what rate should you trade saturated fats for trans fats. I've tried googling, but no luck.
Oh noesies! 1.2g of trans fat?! How ever will little Jr. survive!! There's nothing wrong with small or even moderate amounts of trans fat.
Trans fats make things taste good. Fuck them.
They need to bad FATASSES from eating 5000 calories/day, and fine the everliving shit out of them for every pound they are in the obese range.
Fat doesn't make you fat. HFCS doesn't make you fat. What makes you fat is EATING TOO GODDAMN MUCH.
You can. It's not hard.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Ohhhh boy, and here comes ReichStagFred88 to goose-step all over internet jokes.
OK, this whole thread might be a stupid argument, but damn if that's not one funny bastardization of someone's handle!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
-1 Redundant (we know it's a Demolition Man reference, Captain Obvious)
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Is the health cost worth the benefit?
Products can be labelled as having "0 trans fats" as long as they have less than 5% in each serving. Most products are then marketed as being healthy (e.g. margarine) when in actuality they are one of the most harmful foods you can purchase.
Sorry, your joke was too subtle for Slashdot today. Including the typical hyphen at the end may have helped.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
That fails to address why we shouldn't put it on the label.
Thanks for the explanation. I think it is very confusing use a well-defined word in a meaning that is exactly opposite to both the intrinsic meaning of the word (derived from 'libertas', 'liberty' in Latin) and the meaning of the same word in every other country in the world. Ah well, Americans ;-)
By the way, I always got the impression that both major parties in the USA support big government and hate freedom, but with slightly different objectives. Is that not true? The actual policies of both parties seem very similar to an outsider.
If you're ok to go die in a ditch because you ate a dozen Krispy Kream donuts every day, then fine, have at it, but if you want to join the health care system, then we all should get some say in what you can and cannot eat.
It does affect the overall cost to all of us, so it isn't just "personal choice".
That depends. Are the transvestites sweet and from Transylvania?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Pure socialism doesn't work.
Happiness is somewhere in the middle.
I am seeing this story getting traction all over the place using similar rhetoric. What the FDA proposed was removing artificial trans fats from the "generally recognized as safe" category. Which seems reasonable since it is not generally recognized as safe any longer. This isn't some kind of government over reach this is simply using new science to update the classification of a food additive which is really nothing new.
I for one do look for trans fat content and avoid it as much as possible; so more aware how prevalent it is
and approve such a move even as they mention it's on it's way out (I haven't seen it).
I live in the USA so it's not going to happen, but to reduce Corn syrup/sugar would go a long way to show they cared about ones health.
I also live in an area with a high Mexican population; so shop at their authentic Mexican stores, as their products contain sugar not Corn syrup/sugar.
Corn syrup - Corn sugar I'm even confused of the difference only that both are a product of Corn and not healthy (digested lower in ones system than sugar)
The FDA did stop corn syrup being called corn sugar which is a start -
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/05/30/154009682/fda-rules-corn-syrup-cant-change-its-name-to-corn-sugar
There was a /. article awhile back I don't comment on about Mexicans being the fattest population,
I tend to disagree with the findings.
Or beef tallow like they used to fry McDonald's French fries when I was a kid. No artificial trans-fat there. (Yes, I know one of the reasons they don't use that any more is that if they used either of those then they couldn't sell their stuff to Muslims or Hindus.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The EXACT same people who give you Nanny State authoritarian "from above" rules like these are the ones who exterminated millions of Humans in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and are recruiting, training, arming and funding wave after wave of extremist Islamic terrorists to use as a Human battering ram against the popular secular regime of Syria.
Bloomberg is one of the most depraved zionists on the planet, racist and genocidal, at yet he takes time from demanding the extermination of the planet's muslim nations in order to demand that New Yorkers be banned from making their own food decisions.
And still you sheeple fail to draw the correct conclusion. Like morons, you argue about the 'merits' of the proposal, failing to recognise that monsters are motivated by only ONE goal, the utter subjugation of their own flock of sheeple, in order that the passive support provided by said sheeple may be maximised.
All across our planet, and throughout History, we learn one universal lesson- when ordinary people are treated decently and allowed to live in a decent society, the behaviour of ordinary people tends to generate no serious concerns whatsoever. Trouble ONLY comes from below when the conditions of ordinary life are in some significant sense sub-optimal. AT ALL OTHER TIMES trouble, if it occurs, is created by the actions of those that rule.
Think of a street of families, each of which exhibits a different characteristic. Is the family where the authoritarian Father imposes rule after rule after rule after rule upon his children, all in the name of FORCING them to live a 'better' life the one that you admire? Of course not. OF COURSE NOT. You all recognise that form of family to be highly dysfunctional. Why then do you allow the fabians (whether you have heard the term or not, this is the 'movement' behind the social engineering in the UK and USA) do do the same thing on the scale of cities or whole nations?
We have easy metrics to test the 'quality' of society. Are your rulers passing ever more new laws each an every year, at an increasing rate? Are your prisons increasingly run for profit by private companies? Are more citizens going to prison for longer periods, for infringing ever more laws? Are the out-of-prison punishment options becoming ever more comprehensive, commonplace, and burdensome?. Are the uniformed thugs that impose your masters' will beyond the reach of the law? Are they increasing in number and violence?
In the UK and USA, the answer to each of these questions is a resounding YES. The average citizen of either nation resembles a child in one of those abusive children's homes so commonly found in either the UK or USA before the 1990s. Yes, you sheeple are now treated as inmates of a reform school. And in a reform school, what you were ALLOWED to eat was highly regulated by the state.
Tony Blair is the most powerful fabian ever to walk this planet. Obama's pathetic Obamacare project is simply a sad perversion of PROPER fabian healthcare systems in more civilised nations like Canada and the UK (I didn't say everything the fabians have done is bad- but they reasons they do ANYTHING are wholly bad). Blair wants a World War, and has all the influence he needs over current world leaders. We, the people, are Blair's problem, with our innate sense of self-survival. Millions of Britons marched against Blair's planned holocaust of Iraq, in the biggest protest the UK had ever witnessed, but Blair was easily able to co-opt the anti-war movement by placing his lieutenant, George Galloway, in control to steer it into the ground.
Feeding crap to kids in reform schools and church run homes was (and in the USA still is) a common tactic to break the children's will. And the justification for the crap, across more than the last ten decades, was always "this is nutritionally beneficial". What was removed? Anything that gave the kids PLEASURE.
A psychologically damaged f**ktard, like too many of you reading this, will always claim to see the benefits of SELF-FLAGELLATION. Ho
So does this mean that the FDA will shutdown the sale of all animal products?
Hey there isn't anything wrong with begin Transgender and Fat!
Good choice of words there! Can anyone name any circumstance where eating any kind of shit for any reason is a good thing? One should always assume that eating shit is bad so don't eat shit. No one needs to lie to you! Shit is baaaadd umkay!
If I had mod points, I would have modded down RightSaidFred's original post because you aren't fooling anybody, Heinreich, we know it's you posting AC.
Which proves his point. It's cheap everywhere but here so the problem must lie with us. You may be too young to remember the US's hate for the Commies but it was pretty damned bad. This "grudge against Cuba" claim is just as valid as any other claim the slashbots have posted today.
Yes, but the problem with that is if you make crappy food choices, then we all have to pay for your health care.
If you're ok to go die in a ditch because you ate a dozen Krispy Kream donuts every day, then fine, have at it, but if you want to join the health care system, then we all should get some say in what you can and cannot eat.
It does affect the overall cost to all of us, so it isn't just "personal choice".
I would gladly pay more for the freedom of others to make poor personal choices. Freedom isn't free.
Thank's nanny state liberals. But that hasn't stopped me from profiting handsomely in the stock market from tobacco and corn syrup sales growth. Vice investing (including oil and gas these days) is still very lucrative.
an ill wind that blows no good
Liberals in America conform to the classical definition (within the context of the broader American mentality). The cartoonish description of the big-government loving "Liberal" is just a "Conservative" affectation. I'd expect to hear the same people conflate Communism and Socialism, or Capitalism and Democracy. IOW, ignoramuses.
There are, indeed, almost no influential liberals in Ameican politics. Or conservatives. The debate is between the Democratic and Republican parties, neither of which are satisfactory to liberals or conservatives, respectively. AFAIK, only Republicans even pay lip services to "conservativism". "Liberalism" is largely a dirty word. You are more likely to hear "progressive".
Consider that every Republican will loudly proclaim their conservativism, ranging from "staunch" to "severe", yet I can hardly imagine the current Democratic POTUS calling himself a liberal or progressive, without qualification.
Monsanto has a new soybean they made that can make low trans fat margarine. This is why the FDA is doing this.
Exactly! Fructose from, you know, _fruit_ is apparently not supposed to be so bad but if you take the mostly-glucose from corn and process it to create a higher ratio of fructose to glucose it's not now supposedly a horrible and toxic plague on humanity. If the problem is too much fructose, then that would mean that glucose syrup from corn should be _better_ for you than fructose from fruit juice. Also, since fructose is sweeter, less is needed so the total amount of sugar in the product can actually be reduced a bit when using HFCS versus cane sugar. In any case, targeting just "corn" sounds absolutely idiotic in these circumstances!
On the other hand, trans-fats (note, NOT all hydrogenated oils, just tran-fats) have been shown to be directly harmful. Labeling should have warnings and they shouldn't be able to say "0g trans-fat" when there is 0.499999g per absurdly-tiny "serviing." They can also ban trans-fat as an additive if they want, but such prominent labeling on food could pretty much have the same effect anyway.
Question: Do you believe that tobacco users should pay more for health insurance due to their choices, or would you require that all policies be priced the same regardless of personal choices?
No right or wrong answer, just asking for your view point.
I am very dubious of the government outlawing trans fats. After all, it was not that long ago that they sang to the high heavens the praise of margarine. Government can't be trusted to get these things right and should not be in the business of banning people from eating or using things like this. They might make advisories, which they can later retract when the next fad science produces different results, but regulatory and legislative bans are a bad idea. Government should deal with big problems like war and interstate highways. Stay out of our kitchens and food. Leave the choices up to people.
Can they get rid of high fructose corn syrup also?
If you want the peasants to revolt, this is a good way to do it
Fried foods cooked in lard taste better. The transition to trans fat cooking oil ended my taste for restaurant fried food altogether.
I hope they will distinguish natural and artificial trans fats.
Natural trans fats can be found in dairy products. They are produced by the bacteria inside ruminants guts. They are the trans-vaccenic acid (produced from linoleic acid, a common omega-6 found in sunflower seeds and soy beans), and the conjugated linoneic acid (a.k.a. CLA, produced from alpha-linolenic acid, a common omega-3 acid found in flax seeds and walnuts). None of them are known to be harmful, ant the CLA is even known to have some health benefits, and is available as dietary supplements
On the other hand, there is the evil artificial trans fat created in partially hydrogenated oils: the elaidic acid. That one is harmful, and it may be because it is an isomer of the well known omega 9 oleic acid (found in olive oil, avocado, hazelnut). It is suspected that enzymes in charge of oleic acid will get confused by elaidic acid, because it chemically behaves like expected oleic acid, but has different physical behavior because it is a trans fat.
Question: Do you believe that tobacco users should pay more for health insurance due to their choices, or would you require that all policies be priced the same regardless of personal choices?
My previous comment is applicable to structures where health care is "free" and everyone pays indirectly by virtue of being a taxpayer.
Competition only works if all feet are held to the fire. This applies to consumers, producers and middlemen alike.
If an insurance company wants to charge Smokey the bear more for lighting up or for eating shit far be it for me to complain about that.
Problem with most health care regimes as I see it insurance fails or at some point is captured and then fails to become an effective proxy for competition. As long as the hospitals feet are not at risk of burning health care costs will continue to be grossly detached from reality.
How about moving to "per 100g" labeling, european style?
Well, they are, but it's largely down to the sheer volume of sugar they get through, not the type.
[FUCK BETA]
Tautology. The English word "corn" means "the dominant cereal crop of a geographic region".
Corn - 3: the grain of a cereal grass that is the primary crop of a region (as wheat in Britain and oats in Scotland and Ireland); also : a plant that produces corn (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
In the United States corn=maize. In other countries, corn can be spelt, wheat, amaranth, whatever. The word "corn" has been used this way since English has existed as a written language, and before that the Roman Latin granum had the same meaning.
But it's part of the Ugly American Syndrome (or an expression of American Exceptionalism, if you prefer) to insist that the US definition of corn is the only one, and that maize is a filthy colored person's word. Idiocracy here we come. So if you choose to ignore the technical meaning of the word corn, you won't be the only one!
Its been banned here years ago and it has led to general improvements of health and the industry isn't harmed by it.
It does affect the overall cost to all of us, so it isn't just "personal choice".
Only because the state is slowly but surely removing all other options (obamacare is only the first step).
Someone move to ban the government already
I would gladly pay more for the freedom of others to make poor personal choices. Freedom isn't free.
I thought of something else regarding this...
It is fine that you're willing to pay more for that freedom. What happens when I don't want to? Does your freedom override mine? Is your freedom "better" than mine?
I don't want to and am not willing to pay for the poor health choices of others. Why should I?