Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
If you can find it or make it yourself, go ahead and eat it.
This just means you can't get FDA approval for a recipe if you use trans fats in it. And without FDA approval you cannot sell the resulting food in a store.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
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 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.
Cigarettes are already free of trans fat.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
This is a bit of a silly reduction ad absurdum. The problem with trans fats is that they are cheap and satisfying, and so they wind up in lots and lots of foods people eat, to the point that it's hard to find foods of that type that don't contain them, and you really have to care to find the difference. What this typically looks like is that poor people get foods that are high in trans fats, and well-off people get foods that are not, because poor people shop at price chopper, if they are lucky enough to have one they can get to, and well-off people shop at Whole Foods. And you see this very clearly when you look at health outcomes.
So it's not analogous to tobacco smoke, where the person consuming it has a choice. It's not analogous to chewing tobacco. It is related to fast food, because that's where you find the trans fats, but this actually makes choosing fast food healthier for you.
The point is that whether we make people who make risky health choices pay more or not, this actually eliminates a totally unnecessary health risk that nobody would choose to take on if they had a choice. And that can have a really serious effect on costs down the road, so it's economically a really smart thing to be doing, since health care costs are so high right now. But since it's a choice that can't be made at the point of purchase of the health care, it has to be done some other way, and this is a good way to do it.
tax those things, like cigarettes. i would have been fine with taxing trans fats. but banning them is ok only because there are suitable replacements
the immature understanding of freedom is "i can do whatever i want, damn the consequences"
the mature understanding of freedom is "i can do whatever i want as long as i don't impinge on the freedom of others"
and if your behavior costs me with higher taxes and healthcare premiums for your care, then i have a say in you doing those things, and sending you a bill to help pay for the inevitable higher costs you are causing to me
you really can do whatever you want in life. but if what you do costs others, you are going to be sent a bill
avoiding that bill shows you to be an ignorant freeloader, not a freedom loving person
and this really has nothing to do with big bad evil authoritarian government come to destroy your freedom just for fun and laughs
it's about the natural limitations on your freedoms: the freedoms of others
absolutely. and you're not? you're ok with doing things that cost others without their consent?
that doesn't make you freedom loving. that makes you a thieving freeloader
i'm going to move in next to you and blast loud music at 3 AM. i'm going to jeopardize your life by racing by you in the highway at 95 mph. i'm going to buy a dog and keep hi unchained and let him get in your yard to crap and dig holes. you're telling me that's ok, because your immature "understanding" of freedom apparently means i can do whatever the fuck i want, who gives a fuck if my choices harm or cost others. right?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
FDA has decided a lot of things, many of which turned out not to be true. According to the FDA, Walnuts are a drug (yes it is true).
No it's not true. The FDA forced a walnut distributor to remove some unsubstantiated health claims from the packaging of their products: http://www.fda.gov/iceci/enforcementactions/warningletters/ucm202825.htm. People making false claims about the health benefits of their products (e.g. selling grain alcohol mixed with an emetic as cure-all) was the whole reason the FDA was created.
Walnuts are not classified as a drug, but if you claim they cure cancer without a good double blind study to back you up, you will be called on your bullshit. This is a good thing and is an example of a government agency exercising it's regulatory authority within the appropriate ambit. There are plenty of other real government conspiracies both covert and flagrant to worry about without inventing more.
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.
So I can sell you sugar laced with arsenic? I can sell you rat labeled as chicken? Get real. You're very happy with the people telling your stores what they can and cannot sell you as long as it's some perceived benefit rather than some perceived slight.
Why in the world you would consider this a limit on your personal freedom I have no idea but we all have our crosses to bear. This may be one of yours, I guess. What exactly do you have a problem with in this decision? The lack of consensus in research or some concern you have over what the replacements will be (and their impacts) or just bitching for the sake of bitching?
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Ayn Rand herself spent her final years on government assistance, taking Medicare and Social Security.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.