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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.
What if I want to consume it despite there not being a consensus that it is safe to consume?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
One could argue HFCS is worse than transfat and it is used everywhere. Come on, get on a roll, FDA!
Trans fats are an unwanted biproduct of hydrogenation, and are a fat which humans do not have an enzyme to easily break down. This should directly reduce this incidence of heart disease, and is good news for everyone except cost-cutting food producers.
I doubt the Oil Partial Hydrogenators Union has the same pull on capital hill as the Corn Growers Association.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Oh well, the FDA can't do anything about the rainforests.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The agricultural lobby is very powerful in the US. Very powerful indeed. They are not easily crossed.
Shit storm starting in 3..... 2...... 1.......
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I predict that within the week there will be a website somewhere running a variation of 'Obama decrees transfats illegal' with an article claiming science proves they promote weight-loss and prevent cancer, concluding in a warning that regulation of diet is the mark of a communist takeover.
One can also argue that any kind of refined sugar is not good for you. HFCS is certainly the worst but cane/beet sugar in any form is not healthy in any way. Even the "raw" forms that are just slightly less refined than table sugar are terrible for you, especially in the quantities we consume them.
Uh, the article you linked to explains all about the ill effects of trans fats, including quotes such as "Most scientific research shows that even trace amounts can be harmful to health." Maybe you should read what you link to first next time. Also I suggest you read up on trans-fats!
It's not. it's what, 55% fructose, 45% sucrose -- whereas table sugar is a 50/50 split?
Ever notice how many reforms are actually reversals of previous reforms? Trans fats got a huge boost in the '70s and '80s because the reformers were convinced that saturated fat was very bad for you. Margarine was supposed to be more healthy than butter. So manufacturers ditched saturated fats and went for trans fats.
Similarly, now people want to ban animal testing, which established at the insistence of the reformers of a century ago. HMOs were a healthcare reform of the '70s, and are now reviled. People now complain about mandatory minimum sentencing, which was a '70s reform meant to end the problem of wildly disparate sentences.
And so the cycle goes....
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I think you can probably find a consensus that fried foods are bad for you and if they were not consumed, there could be billions saved in related medical costs.
Maybe they'll get to that later after additional indoctrination.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I own a chocolate company. We make high quality chocolate from cocoa beans that we import directly from the farmers. When I fly over Central and South America, I almost tear up when I see the total devastation caused by Palm Oil. From 30,000 feet, there are times that as far as you can see it is mostly palm oil plantations -- especially over the Yucatan Peninsula. The thing to keep in mind is that unlike many crops, palm oil plantations allow for very little undergrowth and general bio diversity mixed in. (Cocoa often will have other crops mixed in as well as larger "mother trees" of various species shading the cocoa. There is also typically quite a bit of wildlife living in and around the cocoa plantations.) Yes, I've walked in and around palm oil plantations. They are strangely beautiful in the same sense that the European forests with trees all in rows are beautiful. Even so, palm oil plantations wreck total devastation on the local fauna and as much as banning trans fats may help our general health, banning trans fats will certainly destroy the rain forests in and around the equatorial belt.
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In the past few years, I don't recall coming across a single product that had any trans fat.
Great! How about cigarettes?
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Plastic bags also used to be what was going to save the environment.
Is this a South Park episode? Last time, the FDA banned gluten.
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What about good old lard and butter? It used to work just fine on pie crusts. Lard works great for frying my egg. It conveniently comes from the bacon I'm frying up at the same time.
If your eating something where the primary ingredient is HFCS I doubt there is any way to make that product healthy. They would just replace HFCS with something slightly less bad. I'd say people generally eating too much food is a bigger problem than HFCS.
You realize you completely missed the point of what I said.
Which was Trans Fats were considered to be safer than fats. As to their being harmful to health, if we eliminated everything that was believed at some point in time to be harmful to your health there would be nothing left to eat.
Soybean Oil...well soy in general is an Allergen for a statistically significant portion of the population. NOT a good replacement. World needs to move away from modified anything. Go back to good old natural fats and Oils.
Lard folks....use Lard!
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Wasn't that a hoot. Environmentalists wound up destroying farm forests by killing the demand for paper bags, much the way the artificial demand for recycled paper did as well.
He wasn't suggesting it was safer. He was suggesting it was billed as being safer. The article supports his point, since it mentions that historically the stuff was used as a substitute for butter and lard, both because it was cheaper, and because it was a means of reducing saturated fats in our food. They specifically called out the switch from butter to margarine (which is (was?) made with trans fats) as an example of this trend to treat trans fats as being healthier than the alternatives.
I'd say he read his article just fine, since it supports what he's saying. It also supports what you're saying, which is that modern research is showing the stuff is ridiculously bad for you, despite what we were told in the past. You're both correct.
If the measurement threshold is large enough than it can be like those fat free butter sprays that are made from oil and water. When you can say trans fat free as long as it has less than a gram of it why bother changing it when they're mostly milligram doses anyway? Oh and from the fine article it appears the real reason is that Monsanto genetically engineered Soybeans to naturally produce trans fats. So they can use them but not have to claim them.
That's the heart of the problem right there HFCS would probably not be too bad if you had the equivalent of 1 or 2 cans of pop a week. You most likely shouldn't be having 6 cans of pop a day. When everything you eat has it, then you're going to run into problems. I don't think it's right to ban these food additives outright, because they do have their uses, and they aren't terribly bad for you in moderation. However, I wish there was some way to get it into people's heads that they shouldn't be eating so much of this stuff, and should eat more unprocessed real foods.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This way, people have a choice.
If the tax is sufficiently high, then in practice, the people who will consume it the most will tend to be richer... and can generally more readily afford to pay for any of the extra health care they may need because of a poor diet.
As a side effect, it also offers a revenue stream.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yup. Hardly any difference. But HFCS55 sure sounds scarier than 'table sugar". Everyone knows at this point that our problem isn't with fats, it's with carbs.
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.
Okay, the word "was" was in there pretty subtly. Regardless, the facts are pretty clear on trans-fat now, they are more harmful than and as equally tasty as saturated fats, and the only benefit of allowing their sale goes to cost-cutting food producers who'd prefer their customers remain unaware they use them. But, I suppose I see your point.
Even in low consumption HFC is bad. Sugar would be a better. HFC is just used everywhere it's hard to get away from - even if you don't drink pop.
There, fixed that for you... your original looked very odd to those of us old enough remember when the agricultural lobby was the farm lobby.
HFC is not sugar. It has a different chemical signature and is metabolized differently than sugar. It's actually worse than sugar.
No it's not. It's not sugar cane.
trans fats we've known for nearly 10 years are killing us but its not enough. the industry has sat on no brainers for too long and shuffled their lobbyists to the tune of profit. Among others that could be and should be banned:
High Fructose Corn Syrup has turned us into a nation too fat for everything from coffins to military service. numerous studies concur this isnt sugar.
Palm Oil most foods with this ingredient either dont need it, or source it out of a 40 year old legacy habit from colonial dominionism of US trade. the WHO has declared it an abomination, and its destroying rainforest at an alarming rate.
Cigarettes full stop. this shouldnt even be a fucking debate.
Margerine. this is a culinary abortion with as much or more cardiovascular destructiveness as the butter it so readily supplanted in the 70s. ban this sick filth and lets work on diets that contain respectable, conservative amounts of solid fats when needed.
among other things we could cut down on are processed foods in general. its an industry that scams billions out of americans who are manipulated into willfully and ignorantly assuming boiling water and dispensing corn+soy+sodium from a cardboard box is cooking. Jamie oliver was right. Children should be taught at minimum 25 recipes they can use in life for healthy meals and the recipes should then be a required component of graduation.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Problem is people tend to over-eat because of HFCS. People will consumer more because of the HFCS. This is not seen with sugar cane.
Despite all the propaganda, sugar is not much better than HFCS. Not to take away from how bad HFCS is, because it's terrible. But sugar has no nutritional value and it spikes your insulin almost as bad as HFCS.
How about we start with the artificial stuff. It's the artificial stuff that's killing us quickly. The natural stuff seems to take longer.
You can still buy crisco moron.
Crisco used to be a big source but they've been trans fat-free for years.
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
They would just replace HFCS with something slightly less bad.
Like cane/beet sugar, which is only slightly less bad than HFCS.
One could argue that HFCS is worse than transfat, but one could ALSO argue that excess consumption of large amounts of most common sugars is worse than transfat.
Look around, and you'll find only one or two studies that seem to show HFCS is significantly worse than, say, table sugar. There are all of these claims about metabolic differences, but they rarely seem to show up in experiments -- you'll find a lot of experiments, in fact, where there's little difference in effects.
I absolutely agree with you that we should decrease HFCS consumption. But I don't agree if your remedy is that we're just going to replace it with sucrose or honey or whatever else that's basically going to have similar bad effects. We need to lower sugar consumption in general....
I guess it will be back to lard, tallow, and butter for my cooking needs.
Time to offend someone
Yeah because Republicans never grease the wheels of their donors.....moron.....
Go learn. You need to know what HFCS actually is before you can have my attention while you spout off about it.
It's sugar. Specifically, it's corn molasses distilled to remove moisture volume.
No.
HFCS is corn syrup that is processed with an enzyme that converts the glucose in the corn syrup into fructose. Fructose is a naturally occurring sugar found in most fruits and vegetables. The problem with HFCS is right there in the name: HIGH FRUCTOSE corn syrup. HFCS is highly concentrated sugar, which means you are getting far more than you would with an equivalent amount of another sweetener.
I think you mean the Jeb Bush super pac.
You do see the same with cane/beet sugar. Just not as badly as you do with HFCS. But eating food filled with simple carbohydrates (i.e. any kind of simple sugar) causes you to crave and over consume to one degree or another.
Table sugar is 100% sucrose, which breaks down into 50% fructose and 50% glucose. 55F/45S (assuming you didn't brain fart when you wrote that) would break down to 77.5F/22.5G.
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Just because a farm spreads out over several states does not mean it's not a farm anymore.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
If your eating something where the primary ingredient is HFCS I doubt there is any way to make that product healthy. They would just replace HFCS with something slightly less bad.
I'd say people generally eating too much food is a bigger problem than HFCS.
I'm not aware of any product where the primary ingredient is HFCS. However, it is found in many places where it doesn't belong simply because fat and sugar make things taste better. That is why there is HFCS in bread. That's why there is even a sweetener of some sort in most salt.
Neither are beets but we get sugar from them, all sugar is NOT from sugar cane.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
"You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try." - Homer J. Simpson
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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.
I can't believe it is worse for me than butter!
Not as good of a product name though...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Put a big label on them saying contains transfats. Make it in red. Really plenty of choice at this point, supposedly 80% of the products that had transfats no longer do.
HFC is not sugar. It has a different chemical signature and is metabolized differently than sugar. It's actually worse than sugar.
It may be a good idea to look into the sugar composition of honey alongside high fructose corn syrup. Science education and critical thinking allows a person to not be so easily persuaded to believe in propaganda.
No no no, we're certain that HFCS is evil (because we read it on Facebook) and therefore it must be the singular cause of all the world's health problems. If we could just get rid of HFCS we'd instantly live in a skinny-person utopia with everyone living to 130 years old and never needing vaccinations.
Actually, I think this Trans-fat thing has been handled pretty well overall. First, significant evidence was found to indicate that trans fats are very likely to be harmful, especially in larger amounts and over time. It was studied and further confirmed and the public notified. Then many companies and restaurants started to voluntarily phase it out over time, without being immediately pressured with a rapid deadline and burdened with excessive short-term costs. Then labeling was required so that consumers have a way to tell how much trans fat is in the foods they buy, and then years later, the substance is now being declared as no longer generally recognized as safe for use in foods sold here, with another few years to allow for the transition. That seems like a reasonable compromise to me. You can't just ban something that everyone uses overnight, but at the same time, it's kind of irresponsible to allow companies to have companies selling the stuff indefinitely, and it's also important to fully understand the alternatives lest it were to get replaced with something that ends up actually being worse (as happened when replacing saturated fats with trans fats in many products in the first place)
Get the science right. High Fructose is not "concentrated sugar" and that is not why it is bad for you. Glucose is the preferred sugar, your brain and muscles can use it directly. Fructose can only be metabolized in the liver, it also produces more fat, but the primary reason it is a problem is unlike glucose, it does not cause insulin to be released or stimulate production of leptin, a key hormone for regulating energy intake and expenditure. Table Sugar (sucrose) is basically a combination of fructose and glucose. Which means you get your energy from the glucose and the fructose gets turned into fat, which in itself is a good thing until you overdo it.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Oh? Go sit in the corner of a cold room and solidify.....Trans fat wanabee..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It's true, but I believe that science is making progress and there is better evidence now than there was when the previous "reforms" were made.
This cycle is hardly unique to nutritional science, and it's easy to think that we're simply going in circles. However, I think it's more of a helix than a circle. Yes, we do sometimes get close to where we were before, but we never go exactly back to the same point because we have progressed forwards -- although often less than we'd like.
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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My brother refuses to buy any food with palm oil in it, citing environmental issues with it and to a certain extend, health issues. Anyone versed in the topic could enlightened me as to why it's so bad?
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Trans-fat does not only occur in margarine or other hydrogenated vegetable oils, but also in butter, which contains up to 4% trans-fat (of the total fat content). While this is less than in most (but not all) margarines, it is not insignificant.
One could argue HFCS is worse than transfat and it is used everywhere. Come on, get on a roll, FDA!
One could, but one could also argue that HFCS isn't any different than regular sugar, the difference with Trans Fat is there's a scientific consensus around one view.
The FDA shouldn't be banning things just because a few researchers and journalists have started thinking it's bad, if they'd have banned butter a long time ago and we'd all be eating margarine.
I stole this Sig
I'm not trying to say sugar is good for you - far from it - but HFCS is worse. If the food manufacturers left sugar as the sweetener instead of switching to HFCS, health problems wouldn't have been as great. Consumption spiked when HFCS was used.
I do agree reducing sugar consumption would be best. It would be nice if sweeteners weren't used everywhere. For example in salad dressings and pasta sauce.
You got that right.. I simply have to have my palm oil popped pop-corn... MMMM, MMMM, good that stuff is...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yeah because Republicans never grease the wheels of their donors.....moron.....
But, do they use trans-fat?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Check the research on how HFCS is metabolized versus sugar. It's different. Studies have shown that HFCS effects how satiated people feel when eating; people keep eating. This is not the case with sugar. These are facts supported by research. You can stop trolling for the corn industry.
This is the FDA.. As long as it gets good headlines, they won't care what manufacturers actually do. Heck, just produce trans-fats as part of the "cooking" and processing of a item and volia, you've not added any trans-fat to the blooming thing, even if the manufacturing process actually created some...
Just be SURE of one thing... Don't rub the FDA's nose in it or they will bite you hard, again for the headline value.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
...and bread, and pretty much every "low fat" food out there, and "healthy" snack bars, and "healthy" breakfast cereal, and...
I said sugar cane so not sure what you're griping about. FYI when people say "sugar" they typically mean sugar cane.
The craving is worse with HFCS. It's been shown to be addictive like. Unlike sugar cane.
One could, if they could prove that HFCS should no longer be generally recognized as safe, as was done with trans-fats.
Your minor problem is going to be that natural foods do not contain substantial quantities of trans-fats. It's a quirk of the abiotic hydrogenation process that is used to modify naturally occurring unsaturated oils. Thus the substance is essentially artificial.
That's not the case with HFCS. The process that produces HFCS is artificial, but the very same sugars are in corn, sugarcane, fruits, berries, and various vegetables. You don't object to what the substance is -- you merely object to the form it is being provided in and how much is used.
A little thought experiment: would you have the FDA ban honey as well? It has virtually the same glucose to fructose ratio as HFCS 55 (glucose and fructose are the major sugars present at about 32 and 38% respectively), about 17% water, about 10% other sugars (especially maltose, which is a dimer of glucose), and about 3% other.
If not, then tell me the key difference between the two substances that makes one ban worthy and the other not.
Banning HFCS is simply a poor proxy for regulating that amount of sugars that are incorporated into foods. Yet we don't (currently) permit the FDA to regulate on that basis. If you want to have the argument, make the argument. Don't construct a make believe boogeyman and expect a community of nerds to buy into the myth without question.
Right now, a serving of food can contain .4g of transfats per serving and legally list "0g transfats" on the label.
Does the FDA regulation still allow this, or will partially hydrogenated oils of ANY amount be banned?
It will be interesting to see what coffee creamers like CoffeeMate will do, since they use a tiny 1 teaspoon serving size and are something like 50% trans fats so they can easily say "0 trans fats" on the label. Most people use something like a tablespoon and end up with a gram of a half of the transfats in their coffee.
It's not. it's what, 55% fructose, 45% sucrose -- whereas table sugar is a 50/50 split?
Where did you get the idea that you can take a food, completely ignore the body's metabolism, list its component molecules, and declare parity? It's a complete stretch, and so it's completely wrong. This is 1982-era reasoning.
The major problem is the rate-limiting factors of liver enzymes. The liver can handle a little bit of fructose at a time. If it gets overrun, it quickly manufactures triglycerides with the excess fructose, and those run right out and stick to the arterial walls (I know, triglycerides don't like to be anthropomorphized).
Sucrose metabolism is almost entirely rate-limited by the amount of available sucrase enzyme in the small intestine (the stomach acid affects 10% of the amount consumed). This provides a slow-sip of fructose to the liver, so it's much more manageable. This built-in protection is defeated by using HFCS or any unbound glucose/fructose syrup - the liver gets it nearly all at once. Keep that up and you'll be fat and get heart disease.
It's still possible to overload the liver with excess amounts of sucrose - you have more sucrase than liver enzymes, so anything more than a taste of sugar is still going to be a problem. This works out OK if you're going to be starving all winter, but in modern Western societies that starvation never happens, so the weight keeps piling on.
Even if you don't understand the biochemistry, the two basic rules still work well - don't buy stuff in the middle of the grocery store and don't eat anything your Grandmother wouldn't recognize as food from her childhood. Hrm, we might need to up that to "Great Grandmother" these days; if the ingredients label lists a chemical shitstorm straight out of Post-WWII "better living through chemistry - try the transfats!" insanity, don't eat it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
One could argue HFCS is worse than transfat
It's only worse than transfat when it's used to replace transfat, which is in fact one of the ways in which it is commonly used. When it's used to replace sugar, the chemical difference is minimal. When it's combined with a massive load of citric acid (good for you in small amounts, not in large ones) and used in ways other than as a sugar replacement, it's completely batshit crazy.
If the USDA hadn't misled us about the role played by carbohydrates in general, and sugar in particular, then we wouldn't even be having this discussion because people would read the label, say "what's all this carbohydrate content" and put the item back on the shelf. But the "fat is what makes you fat" mantra is still burned into people's minds, in spite of the fact that it is a load of dingo's kidneys, and people are still looking for fat on the label. HFCS isn't fat, so in the cart it goes...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not sure where you shop, but where I shop, HFCS isn't really that abundant. There's none on the lettuce/tomatoes/cucumber I had in the salad that I had for my lunch today. There wasn't any in the salad dressing. There wasn't any in the pasta I had along side the salad. There wasn't any in the home made muffins I had for a snack. There wasn't any in the Cheerios I had for breakfast. It's really not that hard to stay away from. Just read the labels of the food you buy.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Poison is poison.
Waiting serves no purpose.
It's like putting lead on your noodles. Bad for Nestle in India, bad for America.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well, they needed room for all the ethanol crops.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Most granulated sugar does not come from cane. Sugar beets grow in cold climates, and are typically used extensively as a substitute for cane sugar by areas north of the 30th latitude.
When you say "sugar", you typically mean "granulated, dry-packed sugar crystals". That can come from many, many sources. All of them are capable of providing identical fructose/glucose/polysaccharide ratios. To make granulated sugar, the process goes like this:
- Cane: make molasses from sugar cane, then boil it dry. The dehydrated molasses is now "raw sugar". To get white granulated sugar, bleach the raw sugar.
- Beets: make molasses, boil it dry, then bleach it.
- Sorghum/milo: make molasses, boil it dry, then bleach it.
- Corn: make molasses, boil it dry, then don't bother bleaching it because corn molasses (syrup) is already clear or nearly so.
Do you see a pattern here?
You can make sugar out of just about any starchy vegetable. You can make biofuel out of just about any starchy vegetable. Yes, there's a correlation.
Now, if for ANY of those processes, you stop at the "molasses" step and then only partially boil the water out of it, you have High Fructose {plant_name_here} Syrup. Depending on how much water you boil out of it, you may get between 25 and 60 percent fructose mixture, and a dwindling percentage of polysaccharides. All forms of edible sugar are basically defined by the fructose:glucose:polysaccharide:other ratio. HFCS is between 40:55:5:0 and 55:43:2:0. Honey is typically 49:50:0:1 until it's filtered, then it becomes 49:51:0:0. Rehydrated white crystal sugar syrup is 50:50:0:0.
No particular type of sugar is better or worse for you. Once they're refined to the point they can be called "sugar", they're all just combinations of the same thing.
So, to sum up, you're an idiot, and sugar is just sugar no matter its source.
Caitlyn Jenner had better not put on any weight.
Have gnu, will travel.
still waiting on the FDA to ban High Fructose Corn Sirup from everything too...
All the consenting scientists couldn't be wrong, could they?
ALL of them? Sure, it's possible, but not very likely. If you want to wait until science is 100% positive about something before acting on it, feel free to go live in a cave.
I don't respond to AC's.
+1 that sounds tasty!
But aren't you guys discussing saturated fat and not trans fat?
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
Back in the 1970's, the nanny state recommended switching from butter to margarine for a healthy heart. Not great-grandma's margarine, the modern trans-fat stuff.
Then Linus Pauling and the Vitamin C insanity, and hundreds of fad diets, popularized on daytime TeeVee, streamed to a gullible nation of eyeballs, heads tilted back, eagerly tossing back their daily dose of pseudoscience in the form of info marketing.
Nathan Pritikin being the standout among the diet revolutionaries -- an aerospace inventor who shattered the mythology of the American Medical Association by deciphering the link between the overly refined, high fat, salt, and sugar of western diets and the preventable diseases they cause.
If a lot of the items in your basket have a nutrition label on them, it's time to reassess the parts of the store you're visiting. The cereal, vegetable, and limited animal protein diets of our great-grandparents are quick and easy to make, and very healthy for human primates.
Make sure your raw foods are properly prepared. Cooked or cold, you don't want the FDA approved supply stream infecting your throat or gut.
If you're eating something and it tastes good, SPIT IT OUT!
Notice that the old fucker still died anyhow.
We need to stop with the nanny state bullshit like this.
EVERYTHING out there is bad for you when not taken in moderation.
Personal fucking responsibility!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Hfcs has nothing to do with it. If it did, type 2s would start to get better without it. It's only 5% different from table sugar in hf content.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Which studies? Care to provide a link? I kinda always thought that all sugars are metabolized by 'normalizing' them to glucose and fructose. In case of sucrose it involves hydrolysis of one weak chemical bond, that produces glucose and fructose. HFCS simply skips that step.
Lard or tallow make excellent pie crusts, especially for savory pies, but Apple and a few other heavily spiced pies tend to work really well with it.
But I will admit, I had some cherry pie made with a coconut oil crust and it was excellent.
(if you haven't guessed, you should eat pie in moderation)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The major problem is the rate-limiting factors of liver enzymes. The liver can handle a little bit of fructose at a time.
Fructose is directly absorbed into the blood stream. It's not metabolized exclusively by liver.
Yes. I blame all simple sugar (HFCS and cane/beet sugar), specifically the grossly increased consumption in the last few generations. Was that not clear?
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.
So... not a subsidy then? 'Cos that'd be a start.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
This is what pisses me off every time HFCS comes up in a debate. You're not supposed to replace HFCS with sugar. You are supposed to replace it with fresher, less processed foods that don't need added sugars.
The problem I think was that 2 different anti-HFCS groups got some publicity at the same time. One was Dr what's-his-name who called HFCS "poison". But he really meant all sugars. It's just that HFCS was the main one found in everything at the time (because it's cheaper, easier to add since its liquid, and the corn supply is more stable than the sugar supply).
At the same time, the "Passover Coke" crowd was making noise about how much better CocaCola tasted with cane sugar, compared to HFCS. I agree that it does taste awesome, but that has nothing to do with health.
Unfortunately, these two movements collided in the public conscienceless and became "HFCS is really bad for you, and should be replaced with sugar". So now you have idiotic things like Raisin Bran that proudly says "No HFCS" on the box but is full of added sucrose. Raisins are supposed to be the sweetener in Raisin Bran, the only other ingredient should be bran.
Every glass of milk I have every drank has contained transfat. How much more is this going to make milk cost? What will the taste difference be? Will "cow shares" no longer be allowed?
Good luck fighting their respective lobbies. But yeah, simply eliminating subsidies would be a good first step.
I've been on a nearly ketogenic diet for the past year.. it's just this knee-jerk soccer mom like reaction to HFCS just seems dumb to me.
Sugar and HFCS are nearly the same, barring some slight metabolic differences (fructose being metabolized by the liver -- thanks Dr. Lustig, that was an interesting hour long video!) After not consuming much of either of them, i definitely feel better, and 70 pounds lighter to boot. =/
HFCS is strong stuff, so it is easy to add without affecting other parts of a recipe or texture/consistency. Isn't that hard to sugar things up via other sweeteners (or plain sugar), but adding a little more HFCS is almost the same as sprinkling a little MSG on your chinese food.
HFCS is made from corn. Corn subsidies are crazy, which makes HFCS incredibly cheap, but large scale corn farming relatively attractive despite low prices. If you didn't have these corn subsidies, sweetening everything with gobs of HFCS would not be as cost effective. But as long as the first primary is in Iowa, I doubt that will happen.
Bottles.
you know, seeing as the FDA regulates food producers and the ingredients they use.
I would be curious how you propose that the government ban anal sex. Short of sewing everybody's asshole shut at birth and giving them a colostomy, that is...
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Hasn't stopped them in the past.
One could argue that the moon is made of cheese. What do scientists say?
Eat less sweets and you'll be okay. HFCS is no more dangerous than sugar. The obesity rate has very little to do with HFCS and more to do with increased caloric intake in general.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Based on the currently available evidence, the expert panel concluded that HFCS does not appear to contribute to overweight and obesity any differently than do other energy sources.
I'll be interested in seeing any links you can provide that proves the contrary. It's been repeatedly shown that the increase in BMI has less to do with HFCS or sugar and more to do with increased caloric consumption in general. Over reliance on fast food and poor dietary choices are the leading causes of obesity.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Trans-fats naturally occur in butter and human breast milk. If you ban trans-fats, will butter be coming off the shelves?
"'Trans fat raises the bad cholesterol and lowers the good cholesterol a little bit,' he said.'Saturated fat only raises the bad cholesterol.'"
There's actually no scientific proof of this, and in studies done over the last 5 years, can't be replicated.
I expect to read the news of that kind in a near future. A track was stopped at US-Mexican border. The shipment was marked as a medicine marijuana supplied for CVS by their business partner Cali Cartel. However a careful search found under few bags of marijuana --- carefully packaged Trans Fats!
We're winning the War On Drugs every day, right?
Sure, why not ban 'em?
Unlike marijuana, there are safer substitutes for trans fats that are better. Butter, lard, for two. I'm not sure about palm oil.
And you could also argue that a small drink is a safer substitute for a big drink. A person can just stand up and get a refill, but if they're less likely to do that if they start with a small cup, then it makes laziness work for them instead of against them.
--PM
Hello,
I find the argument that "healthy" people live longer and end up costing more in health care interesting.
However, I am reluctant to believe it based on your claim alone, and I would find it hard to persuade others. Have you got any sources to cite?
If you're right, I think many might find it interesting.
--PM
What exactly do you think connects the intestine to the liver?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Death within minutes of marijuana use.
Statistically speaking, a shitload of people are going to die within minutes of marijuana use, because so many people die every day, and so many people use marijuana every day. But since it reduces blood pressure, and stress is the #1 killer in America... well, work it out yourself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
However, I wish there was some way to get it into people's heads that they shouldn't be eating so much of this stuff, and should eat more unprocessed real foods.
Good luck with that: "this stuff" is cheap (that's why they use it instead of stuff like butter and real sugar), and with the middle class disappearing in this country, a lot of people simply don't have money for "unprocessed real foods".
Also, there's evidence that some of this stuff (like HFCS) is addictive.
No, table sugar is the same, 55/45. The difference is that table sugar is sucrose, a complex molecule which is broken down by the body into glucose and fructose. HFCS is already broken down into the simpler glucose and fructose molecules so your body doesn't have to expend energy doing that, and can just pump it directly into your bloodstream.
I'm not aware of any product where the primary ingredient is HFCS.
You've never heard of Coca-Cola or any other soda? Besides water, sugar is the main ingredient.
Table sugar is 100% sucrose, a disaccharide consisting of one glucose and one fructose molecule covalently bound together. HFCS is a mixture of glucose and fructose as monosaccharides (individual sugar molecules). Multiple HFCS compositions exist commercially.
.: Semper Absurda
[citation needed]
HFCS is sugar. Sugar is sugar.
The subsidies are bad. People eat too much of it. But (until some proof is provided), it apparently isn't any more unhealthful than any other sugars.. unlike trans fats, which truly were worse than what they replaced.
Everyone knows at this point that our problem isn't with fats, it's with carbs.
Unfortunately, when it comes to nutrition, "everyone" has fallen for a mixture of quackery and old wives' tales. Case in point: your conflation of simple sugars and complex carbohydrates, which ignores the excessive animal protein and extraordinary dearth of fiber currently consumed in Western diets.
.: Semper Absurda
How about this sort of Devil's bargain:
you're old and in failing health, but you could be kept alive with ever more heroic health care measures.
You come down with something fatal if untreated, and really unpleasant even if treated. Would you make a bargain with your healthcare insurer, "Hey, you pay me 50% of the cost of saving my life, and give me only palliative end of life care instead. My heirs thus get 50%, and you save a bit less than 50%. How about that, insurance company?"
It's rational to do this, but could you find enough rationality in yourself, your heirs, your insurance company, and society in general to make such a bargain and have it stick?
--PeterM
I would be happy if the government just stopped substituting them so heavily.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Care to provide a link?
Sure, the Wikipedia article provides an adequate discussion of fructose metabolism.
I kinda always thought that all sugars are metabolized by 'normalizing' them to glucose and fructose. In case of sucrose it involves hydrolysis of one weak chemical bond, that produces glucose and fructose. HFCS simply skips that step.
More or less, although it's a bit more complicated due to how sugar molecules are transported in different cell types (as discussed in the above link). However, most commercial HFCS compositions have more fructose than glucose, which can lead to excess Krebs cycle intermediates that are in turn directed to fatty acid metabolism (via acetyl-CoA).
.: Semper Absurda
Indeed, fructose is primarily metabolized in the liver.
.: Semper Absurda
I never mentioned any complex carbs, so I don't see how I could be conflating simple sugars and complex carbs.
Sorry, I thought that was so obvious it didn't need explaining.
We can make this very simple: the problem is foods with a high glycemic load.
The ratio of fructose and glucose in HFCS is similar to a lot of fruits. Grapes are probably the closest, at 54% fructose, 46% glucose; and honey at 56% fructose, 44% glucose. So if HFCS is bad for you, then so are grapes and honey. And if you're trying to paint fructose as the bad guy, then you should be horrified to know that apples, pears, and watermelon have an even higher fraction of fructose.
The problem isn't HFCS per se. It's that we eat too much damn sugar (in all forms).
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.
There are taxes on sugar. It is 5x higher in the US than the rest of the world (if you are in the US)
That 5x bump in cost is one of the reasons HCFS exists in so many products. Sugar is so dammed high (already).
Deciding that you'd "very much in favor of a relatively high tax" on something you don't like is a pinheaded means of solving the problem. How about the FDA limit sugar / HCFS in products.
Tax the shit out of it and people will stop buying and dying of X (insert tobacco) related causes -
You have to read the Ingredients list and seek out "hydrologised" or "partly hydrologised" fats. Because a small amount of trans fats below a certain threshold are allowed to be listed at zero in the main Nutritional Information list the manufacturers manipulate the Serving Size so that Trans Fats are below the threshold, you can't go by the Nutritional Information list. Also they can use "Trans Fat Free" banners on the package if the serving size is so manipulated.
France banned hydrogenated vegetable oil and saw something like a 30% or 40% reduction in heart attacks... in just a single year. Just how blatant of a good idea do you need this to be?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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.
Say what? Tax HFCS? Why not just remove the subsidy for corn? Hawaii would be much happier if that were the case. They have been economically disadvantaged since the 1970s because the corn lobby has been successful at getting subsidies large enough that manufacturing High Fructose Corn syrup is cheaper than just growing sugar cane.
I doubt you can find more than a very small handful of products that use cane sugar. I would be interested in seeing studies that prove your claims that cane sugar is bad for you when used in moderation. Do you have links handy as I am a busy person.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
was a clue zooming far above your head.
You see that A is bad. Then somebody propose B. But B cannot be tested in double blind study or similar because B is an economic outfit (HMO) or a food stuff which would be difficult to test (trans fat). Since there is no counter indication from maybe short animal study (think toxicity and cancer) you accept it as GRAS. Then 30 years down the line you see an increase of coronary disease so you remove it from GRAS list. There is nothing really that special here or surprising. It works in cycle because science for food or economy can take a very long time to come to results (well at last food. Economy is another can of worm. Wriggling worm).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The first margarine fabrication were in the 1870 in France nonetheless. But at that point it was an all natural product fabricated from animal fat tallow and water. It was only much later (in 1950 IIRC) that trans fat came in as a byproduct of hydrogenation of unsaturated fat , process used to give it specific consistency and properties. AFAIK in the last 10 years or so margarine maker saw the writing on the wall and removed completely (or removed mostly) trans fat from the fabrication process of margarine.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Even if you don't understand the biochemistry, the two basic rules still work well - don't buy stuff in the middle of the grocery store and don't eat anything your Grandmother wouldn't recognize as food from her childhood.
Really? This is really the shit that gets modded up to +5 these days, again and again? Do I even have to spell out what's wrong with it?
On your fructose rantings: your explanation, if true, vilifies almost all fruits just as much as it does HFCS. No doubt you'll come up with some anecdotal, pulled-out-of-your-ass justification for treating HFCS differently, though.
Also, let's just keep completely ignoring the fact that heart disease and stroke are top killers worldwide, even in countries where they have never heard of HFCS.
How does this neoluddite shit keep getting modded up? If you're against sugar then fine, but the anti-HFCS movement is mostly completely fine with table sugar used as a substitute, and it appears that absolutely none of these blowhards are advocating treating the fructose in fruits the same as the fructose in corn.
If you're against HFCS but pro-grape juice (increasingly being used as a sweetener in some products that want to avoid HFCS cooties), you are either a Dr. Oz-loving neo-Luddite moron who needs to turn in his geek card immediately or you are sitting on some earthshaking unpublished scientific studies.
-forbid the consumption of a substance that vested commercial interests have totally convinced me is salubrious?
What pray tell is the problem with it? Obesity and diabetes? I drank 2 mountain dew 20 ounces a day for a while in college and still drink a pop at least every other day (never diet, artificial sweeteners give me a headache) yet my current BMI is 21 and my blood sugar is fine. In fact when I was drinking the most pop in college my BMI was more like 17.
What made me fatter (or some people would call less skinny) was chicken nuggets and milk shakes I ate after I graduated, soda had no impact on my weight.
Stop them from marrying them? By denying a marriage license.
Stop them from having relations is tougher, for the same reasons that banning anal sex would be difficult.It would generally take a victim coming forward and testifying about what happened....
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Just looked up the ingredients.
Oil and vinegar are pretty much natural preservatives. So there's no need to add in artificial ones. Perhaps a little high on the salt at 350 mg per serving, but it's really not that bad. Also, studies have actually shown that sodium is not that bad for you
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Social Security does have a cap. Medicare, on the other hand, has no cap. It also increases once you get past $200k (ACA provision, .9% Medicare surtax on income > $200,000).
There are very few facts in my elementary science book that stand true today. And I'm not that old.
My point is, claiming a "consensus" is actually a violation of one of the rules of logic. And if science held to all of it's consensuses simply because there was a consensus at the time, then we would still believe the sun orbited the Earth.
I'm not wanting to hide in a cave. Rather, I just want an logical fallacy used as a claim of science.
Rather than use using butter or olive oil etc. They will use this more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Why a tax? My understanding is that farmers get subsidies based on crops, particularly corn, in order to keep prices low. But the price of corn has been kept so low, apparently, that we can turn it into ethanol and a sugar substitute.
If my understanding is correct, just remove the subsidy (not instantly, but a gradual removal over three years.) Then all the other stuff you say will happen anyway.
(It also creates a nice paradox for Republicans: Stick to your guns about smaller government by removing subsidies, or lose the support and money of the ag lobby. At the moment the ag lobby would win that, though.)
Rights aren't granted by the Constitution.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
WTF have they forgot about Cigarettes... Try banning something that really kills people and costs the health care companies tons of cash.... Oh yeah I'm from your government and I'm here to help you, I'm mean f-you we do what we want! If it's good for you or not we decide!
The point just absolutely flies over your head, doesn't it?
John Galt did was he was told to do. If he was told to apply for food stamps, he did. He simply did as he was told, withholding the fruits of his thoughts and labors from a society determined to steal them from him.
You need to ACTUALLY READ Atlas Shrugged and identify the various archetypes she lays out there. She was playing John Galt. Alan Greenspan played Fransisco d'Anconia. Various CEOs have played her Ubermen (ie Dagney Taggart and John Rearden) or corrupt rent seekers (Dagney's brother). Today almost entirely the latter. Various people are either moochers, looters, or ignoramuses (like Dagney's assistant, who tried to work within the system while maintaining his honor, ultimately leading to his death as the world collapsed around him).
We are all in the belly of a terrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death. Rand recognized that in order for us to survive, we need to make it bleed out faster before it digests us all, whether by non-compliance (as did those who went to Galt's Gulch) or by total compliance (Galt himself, as a janitor in Taggart Transcontinental).
But hey, I'm sure you know more about her philosophy than she did, so you just continue to sit there are judge and mooch while all is looted. I'm sure it will all be okay.