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FDA Bans Trans Fat
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has finally come to a conclusion about artificial trans fat: it must be removed from the U.S. food supply over the next three years. According to their final determination (PDF), there's no longer a scientific consensus that partially hydrogenated oils are safe to consume. Trans fat must be gone from food in the U.S. by June, 2018, unless a petitioner is granted specific approval by the FDA to continue using it. "Many baked goods such as pie crusts and biscuits as well as canned frosting still use partially hydrogenated oils because they help baked goods maintain their flakiness and frostings be spreadable. As for frying, palm oil is expected to be a go-to alternative, while modified soybean oil may catch on as well." The food industry is expected to spend $6.2 billion over the next two decades to formulate replacements, but the money saved from health benefits is expected to be more than 20 times higher.
Then you should also sign a card saying you are not entitled to medical care to treat potential illnesses caused that have direct links to the digestion of trans fats, unless you pay for it yourself.
Sure thing. I'm not entitled to that.
I'm all for "it's my body" and all that, I honestly am, but not at the expense of others.
Agreed.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
by now we've all consumed enough of them to potentially suffer
Not likely. While I certainly agree that trans fats are bad, I think there are things that people consume that are much worse for them that they consume more often. Take for example refined sugars, or pure/mostly pure simple carbohydrate breakfasts (which if you eat cereal or bread of any variety for breakfast, then that describes you. That also includes any variety of bread/pasta throughout the day.) The message of avoiding (for example) eggs and bacon for breakfast in favor of cereals, waffles, or pancakes was the wrong one, which the FDA only finally realized just a few months ago.
I honestly think that is doing more harm to most people than trans fats are. Believe it or not, simple carbs raise your cholesterol and triglycerides far more than fats and dietary cholesterol, and the reason why is because your liver has to make up for the unsaturated fats that you aren't consuming, and it produces all lipids/cholesterol as a packaged deal.
I'm actually a living example of what I just described, by the way. After switching to just eggs and sausage for breakfast every single day, my cholesterol is now normal without taking any kind of statin drugs, and I used to be on a heavy dose.
I see you still haven't bothered to learn the definition of "socialism".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Can you imagine the amount of tax revenue lost if the FDA banned cigarettes? All that money would suddenly be going into legitimate criminals' hands on the black market instead of the criminals' at big tobacco.
I'm not a fan of banning them either. However, given the rate of obesity and type 2 diabetes in this country with strong evidence they are caused by our increased consumption of various kinds of sugar ("real" sugar and HFCS), I would be very much in favor of a relatively high tax on them.
The reason they're used in processed foods is because they are an effective and cheap flavor enhancer. Tax them and they become less economically viable in cheap bulk processed foods. Consumption would naturally go down as alternatives were substituted. And for the people that still consume it in quantity, the tax revenue can be funneled into taking care of the health problems caused by over consumption. Win win.
In the past few years, I don't recall coming across a single product that had any trans fat.
FDA had mandatory labeling for transfats, which contained a loophole. You could put a label stating "0g transfat" if your product contains less than 0.5g of transfat per serving. If you define your serving size as 1g than your product can be made of nearly 50% transfats. Many bakery products, particularly the ones with long shelf life do contain transfats and can be labeled as "0g transfat". That's why some manufacturers use a label "No transfats" to indicate that there are indeed no transfats in their product.
We actually make a habit of saving our bacon fat when possible, it actually saves well for cooking more than once and it is so tasty. Only downside really is that some of our friends are of religions (Jewish, Muslim, and Vegan) where it's not allowed, so the little that we do have these friends eat with us we have to switch back to the lesser oils.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Although many people don't think about lard in baked goods (other than maybe biscuits), it works quite well there. Oreos was made with lard until sometime in the '90s when the replaced it with -- wait for it -- partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. It looks like we've come full circle. (Yes, I know oreos aren't exactly the greatest baked good, but it can work elsewhere too.)
That said, you only listed tallow and lard. Don't forget about butter and rendered chicken fat (schmaltz), which is really good stuff (and is often a byproduct of cooking chicken).
On an unrelated note, Wisconsin is ahead of the curve on regulating trans fats courtesy of the butter lobby:
97.18 (4) The serving of colored oleomargarine or margarine at a public eating place as a substitute for table butter is prohibited unless it is ordered by the customer.
97.18 (5) The serving of oleomargarine or margarine to students, patients or inmates of any state institutions as a substitute for table butter is prohibited...
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.g...
Hell, it was illegal to sell margarine here for many years.
Bacon fat tastes better, for sure, but with a smoke point of about 370F, it's not for everything. Also the taste is not ideal for some things: sauteeing onions with bacon fat for use on a steak or hamburgers works really well, but I don't like the result for say, french onion soup, butter works best. Vegetable oil with a smoke point of 450F is very handy for stir-fry and other high-temp frying activities.
My only point really is using the right tool for the job. Whether or not something is/is not good for you is difficult to establish with too many $ interests to entirely trust the output. Moderation and calorie counting still seems like the sensible approach until someone can definitively establish that something is actually really bad for you, or else you have a medical condition which requires you to eliminate something from your diet.
I have no problem with her taking it. She paid for it. I imagine that had she not contributed to it and not been eligible to receive it, she still would have been broke, and probably not significantly later than when she went on the dole.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
She got way more than she paid in. Everybody except the rich does. That's because one of the dirty little secrets of social security and Medicare is that they're socialist programs. The whole thing about her "paying" for it b was cooked up to get libertarian types like her to accept the v help the desperately needed. If you'd had a decent history prof in college you'd know this
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Take 2 tbl spoons of that bacon fat and put it in a pot. Heat it up and add dry rice to it then stir and cook tell the rice goes from white to a kind of translucent.
Add the water, bring to a boil, drop to a simmer, and simmer for 20 min.
Rice turns out flaky and perfect with a hint of bacon flavor. Personally I love it for breakfast. 1cup of the rice and two eggs over easy on top. Great bacon flavor with my eggs and a whole lot less fat and calories.
I use light virgin olive oil to cook rice and most dishes. Almost anything except baking can be done with either water, soya sauce, and/or a good quality olive oil.
Veggies work best if steamed in a microwave, in terms of nutrients.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
There are a bunch of reasons why a switch back to animal fats isn't going to happen.
First is lobbying by the likes of Monsanto (who produce all the GM crops that go into the oils like Canola and Soybean that will still get used as part of the oil mix even with the trans-fat ban)
Second is the years of anti-animal-fat FUD that has to be overcome to convince people that animal fat is somehow OK.
And third is pressure from vegetarian groups who pushed some of these chains to ditch animal fats in the first place.