U.S. Bans Trans Fat

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-16/u-s-bans-trans-fat-in-a-boost-for-palm-oil-and-a-blow-for-pie

by adventured • 11 years ago

259 323 11 years ago

mhurron2• 11 years ago

“I don’t know how many lives will be saved, but probably in the thousands per year when all the companies are in compliance,”

I doubt it. People are going to continue to eat way to much of things they shouldn't, or too much of things that should be only eaten in moderation. It's not like Trans-Fats are the only thing people are eating too much of that is killing them.

mason55• 11 years ago

Very few things in food are categorically bad for you. Even stuff like fat & sodium, which people generally think of as "not good for you" are required for your body. If you tried to make a list of foods that actively harm you or that cannot be made a part of a healthy diet then your list would be very small.

Transfats are one of the few things that the above does not apply to. They are actively bad for you and there are no known redeeming qualities.

saint_fiasco• 11 years ago

Depends on what the substitute foods are.

If people start eating 100 percent less trans fat but 300% more sugar to compensate, then even though sugar has redeeming qualities, it will be a bad thing, right?

cactusface• 11 years ago

Well, if it was categorically bad for you, it probably wouldn't be considered food.

mhurron2• 11 years ago

Way to focus on that and not the much more real problem with people's diets, eating way too much. Yes, you need sodium in your diet to live, you do not need 3400 mg of it a day (twice recommended level).

Can you show that Trans-Fats would be killing people if they stuck to properly portioned meals?

Removing Trans-Fats is just going to be replaced with other fats, and probably some sugar for 'taste' that people will continue to eat far too much of. I expect the effect of removing Trans-Fats to be negligible to none because of that.

Someone12343• 11 years ago

It is quite disturbing how big the anti-fat (in food) sentiment got in the 1980s and 1990s. And even though it has been heavily debunked, people still look at fat quantity in food to decide what is "healthy." Ignoring the fact that fat (not transfats, regular dietary fat) is extremely good for you, and won't cause you to gain weight.

There are even still "low fat" foods on the shelf which intentionally remove dietary fat and replace it with complex carbohydrates (mostly sugars), which are bad for you.

Remember the whole "red meat will kill you!" thing? Yeah, utter nonsense. There's a small amount of cancer risk from the cooking process (and glazing/smoking) but broadly speaking raw meats are one of the healthiest non-vegetables you can eat. Much healthier than processed foods. The more fat the better.

When you order a burger, the bun is by far the most unhealthy part. Then the sugared sauce (e.g. ketchup, mayo, etc), then the american "cheese," and last of all the meat. But most modern burgers are just "sugar delivery devices" in the sense that the % of meat is tiny and % of sugar (from bun, cheese, and sauce) is getting higher and higher.

tomjen35• 11 years ago

Transfats are one of the few things that the above does not apply to. They are actively bad for you and there are no known redeeming qualities.

Yeah eggs, salt, fat in general - all of these used to be considered dangerous too. Why should I believe that trans-fats are dangerous?

baldfat3• 11 years ago

Although trans fats are edible, consumption of trans fats has shown to increase the risk of coronary heart diseasein part by raising levels of the lipoprotein LDL (so-called "bad cholesterol"), lowering levels of the lipoprotein HDL ("good cholesterol"), increasing triglycerides in the bloodstream and promoting systemic inflammation.

[http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-cho...]

tomjen35• 11 years ago

I am not sure - years ago trans-fat were banned in Europe and now our chips are so greasy that I can't stand to eat them.

Vraxx7• 11 years ago

Thank goodness. This will finally put an end to companies including trans fat in their products but labeling 0 grams of trans fat due to serving size and other stupid tricks. I think consumers as a whole can get over pie crust not feeling the same for a little bit, as well as a slightly different texture for frosting.

venomsnake3• 11 years ago

Leaf lard

nsxwolf5• 11 years ago

This already happened several years ago. There was about a year where all snack foods were utterly disgusting - Cheetos were like fried glass, potato chips were limp and off tasting, Oreo cookies were brittle and the filling tasted like chemicals.

They slowly figured out replacements for the trans fats that improved the quality. We'll never know quite what they are because of trade secrets. But it's probably far less natural than hydrogenated oils.

Oreo cookies, by the way, never recovered. They are terrible.

Vraxx7• 11 years ago

I still go to stores and see products proudly labeled with 0 grams of trans fat that actually contain trans fat after consulting the ingredients list. This did not stop years ago.

azdle• 11 years ago

“I don’t know how many lives will be saved, but probably in the thousands per year when all the companies are in compliance,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Ironic since CSPI is one of the major reasons that we are using trans-fats today.

talmand• 11 years ago

One of them? From what I've read and documentaries watched, they are the major reason. Typically example of people going out of their way to order people how to live their lives for the "better" but ends up being worse. Plus it seems they are being revisionist about trying to act as if their pro trans-fat stance never happened.

LordKano8• 11 years ago

They are the primary reason.

bamie9l• 11 years ago

"As for frying, palm oil is expected to be a go-to..." uhoh

leonardicus• 11 years ago

That's nice, but I think will be ineffectual in practice. As soon as you start cooking with any unsaturated fats, a portion will isomerize to trans fats. I doubt major food manufacturers are using only trans-fat sources in today's climate of health conscious (or hypervigilant) practices.

cko• 11 years ago

I thought it required heat plus a metal catalyst to convert unsaturated fats to trans fats.

hga3• 11 years ago

You'd also need a hydrogen source; catalysts might be available, but you need bulk hydrogen to get anywhere.

nate_meurer• 11 years ago

As far as I can tell, merely heating cooking oils does not create significant quantities of trans fats:

http://blogs.longwood.edu/incite/2012/01/30/heat-induced-cis...

From the above paper:

"The results indicate that heating canola, corn, and premium and generic olive oil to their smoke point for at least 15 minutes does not quantifiably increase their respective concentration of trans fatty acids."

jwally• 11 years ago

By these standards, how is alcohol still legal?

Alcohol-Related Deaths: Nearly 88,000 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making it the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States.

-http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-con...

EDIT: I'm not advocating that alcohol be illegal. I couldn't care less to be honest.

I guess my comment was more of a question of how can you ban substance "A" because "Its bad for you"; but not ban substance "B" which kills 90k people in the U.S. annually? It just seems cherry picked is all. If the gov't is going to ban bad things, how does substance "B" get a pass?

lbotos• 11 years ago

I don't think mobsters in America right now are gonna start a trans-fat ring to get people their trans-fat needs.

shaneofalltrad• 11 years ago

This is a good point, but still shows how our laws and the reasoning is never transparent. I wonder what they really are up to? It obviously opens the door for other regulated products (as in more profitable) will now have a higher demand. The FDA is the mobsters in America by the way.

shogun21• 11 years ago

So you're saying we should open a trans-fat speakeasy.

ra1n85• 11 years ago

Een America, first you get da trans fats. Den you get de money. Den you get de power. Den you get de weemen.

carapat_virulat3• 11 years ago

Trans fat will still be legal to buy, it just won't be labeled as food or sold in food stores.

SilasX• 11 years ago

Sure, in the sense that people won't consciously seek out trans fats. If organized crime gets behind this, it will be in the form of, "Hey, the fries at Joe's in Little [ethnic enclave] are really good..."

baldfat3• 11 years ago

Don't get me started. people seem to always look at me strangely when I tell them I don't drink. People like it and it is important to them so anything said against alcohol is RADICAL. People love being emotionally numbed and I guess people have a right to depress their emotions with drinking or whatever legal/prescribed drugs they want. There is very little said in terms of the emotional/relationship cost of their use.

1 in 10 US Deaths are directly related to Alcohol Use [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/alcohol-responsible-1-10...]

World Wide: In the age group 20 – 39 years approximately 25 % of the total deaths are alcohol-attributable. [http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs349/en/]

Karunamon2• 11 years ago

How much of that is due directly to the alcohol and how much is due to good old-fashioned human stupidity, slightly enhanced?

The issue with this stat is that someone hurts/kills themselves or someone else, they had alcohol in their system, ergo it's an "alcohol-related incident". The problem with this line of reasoning should be obvious.

collyw2• 11 years ago

Road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for young people. Why not ban cars while we are at it.

jahnu• 11 years ago

It's possible one might be better off drinking slightly more than recommended..

http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/truth-wont-admit-dr...

rburhum• 11 years ago

How about drinking 4oz of wine to complement a good meal? Not drinking to get drunk??? Shocking, I know, but many adults do this.

ohitsdom• 11 years ago

I'm sure you get harsh reactions to your opinion, but seems like your attitude towards drinkers is a little harsh as well.

People love being emotionally numbed
I guess people have a right to depress their emotions with drinking

Blanket statements like this are unfair. I'd wager most drinkers do so moderately, and are not doing so to numb their emotions.

crimsonalucard• 11 years ago

I and most people here drink occasionally, but this doesn't change the fact that you're right.

People paint illusions around what they like.

Jimmy• 11 years ago

People love being emotionally numbed

That's not what alcohol does. If anything, it's an emotion amplifier. It does usually put me on the happy end of the spectrum, but I don't consider that to be "numbing".

Lambdanaut• 11 years ago

Too widely used with too specific qualities that aren't closely enough replaceable. There are replacements for transfat that don't dramatically alter the taste or texture, but you can't drink a soda and get drunk.

It's politically a more difficult maneuver; we know because we tried it in the 20s

kls• 11 years ago

There are certain dishes, which require shortening, that there is no effective replacement such as Apple Pie or Southern style biscuits. Shortening creates a flakiness and funny enough in floured baked goods, creates a flavor more buttery than butter alone, it has a magnifying property. Anyways the loss of (trans-fat) shortening will / has certainly drastically alter certain types of quick bread baking.

Shortening's like Crisco have been reducing the amount of trans-fats and the results can be seen in the loss of flakiness and butteriness of quick bread baking so much so that there is already a market for the older stuff.

http://www.cakecentral.com/forum/t/736295/does-generic-veg-s...

nck4222• 11 years ago

Because people like drinking alcohol, but no one's going to protest over one type of oil being replaced with another in junk food.

MacsHeadroom• 11 years ago

Because substance A is taken willingly and knowingly and has no realistic substitute. Substance B is slipped to consumers unknowingly in many cases and there are plenty of cheap healthy substitutes.

Alcohol and Transfats are apples and oranges.

ams61105• 11 years ago

Trans fat content is listed on EVERY nutrition label, by law.

CWuestefeld2• 11 years ago

But the federal government has banned marijuana, which is arguably much safer than alcohol, and a potential substitute. In fact, they've banned to such a degree that for most purposes even scientific research on it is illegal.

It really does seem arbitrary, and once the arbitrary decision is made, all bridges are burned and we commit ourselves 100% to the capricious decision.

dragonwriter5• 11 years ago

Because alcohol is deeply socially ingrained with no direct substitute for most users, which makes banking it ineffective and likely to produce more harm than good. We kind of tried that already. Trans fats aren't like alcohol in that way.

afterburner• 11 years ago

We kind of tried that already

Exactly. We don't want The Mob 2.0. Banning something with such a huge demand is begging to transfer wealth to criminal organizations. (Unless you were willing and able to enforce it. And of course it's not the only reason.)

JustSomeNobody• 11 years ago

Because the NFL would go broke. Everyone knows it takes at least a 6 pack before one can understand why a 1 hour game has less than 15 minutes of actual play. Without alcohol to dull the senses, people would simply stop watching it.

bennyg• 11 years ago

Commercials. And American football isn't like futbol, you can't run around for 90 minutes straight knocking each other out. Breaks are good. Plus the whole thing is entertainment, you don't have to optimize for time - that's the antithesis of entertainment.

omegaham• 11 years ago

You're probably not a fan, (which is fine - different sports aren't for everyone. I actually find association football, basketball, and baseball to be excruciatingly boring, but love watching track and field) but there's more going on than the actual "play." When the ball is downed, there are 40 seconds for the following to happen:

1. Substitution of players. Doing this dramatically changes the face of the offense. For example, in a short yardage play, they might sub out 1-2 receivers and sub in linemen. This gives the offense more power in the run. Alternatively, they can sub out the tight end and bring in a fifth receiver for the opposite - less blocking, more options for the quarterback to throw to.

2. Planning the next play, which has to be communicated to the players. This is, of course, affected by the substitution. Misdirection is a key part of game planning; for example, they might sub in two more linemen and still pass the ball, as the defense is expecting a running play.

3. The defense sees the formation and reacts to it. They've also substituted their players to be in line with the offense's players, (for example, if the offense has extra linemen, the defense will sub in extra linebackers) and will craft a defense on the fly to react to how the offense is arranged.

4. The quarterback sees the defense's alignment and makes adjustments on the fly. The middle linebacker does the same thing on defense.

5. The quarterback signals for the center to snap the ball, beginning the play.

All of this is intricate and happens pretty quickly, and if you're smart and experienced, you can predict what's going to happen and follow the action. I find it to be exciting, especially when you see a mismatch and the losing team scrambling to figure out a way to adjust. There's suspense that gets created as the offense drives down the field. Can they keep it up? Will the defense adjust? What new things are they trying in order to succeed where their previous efforts have failed? All of this is dynamic and happens very quickly. You'll literally watch a small change in blocking scheme wreck havoc on the defense's run defense. You'll watch a single linebacker's edge rushing butcher an offense's passing game and the offense scrambling to figure out anything to slow him down.

Unfortunately, watching the game has gotten worse over the years because of more commercials and terminally banal commentary, but football itself is great. I'll watch a shitty D3 college game and enjoy it as long as it's relatively competitive.

What really pisses me off is when this fast-paced, intricate game of chess is being played on the field and they're looking at goddamn people in the stands or cheerleaders or coaches or whatever. There's stuff going on, and we're missing literally half of the action because they want to show some shirtless drunk jackasses in the nosebleed seats.

On the bright side, the Chinese stream of the NFL is fantastic. No commercials.

matwood• 11 years ago

Haha...I treat the NFL like I do futball. I have it on the background until I hear the announcer raise his voice in excitement and then pay attention. Say what you want about the NFL, but there is a lot of 'play' going on during dead balls.

johnward• 11 years ago

or sugar?

2color• 11 years ago

Can you imagine how many deaths there would be if alcohol was banned?

drzaiusapelord4• 11 years ago

Because we have different levels of risk and standards for what we consider recreation substances vs food? I don't know why that's so far to understand. These things have almost nothing in common from a public policy perspective. Even if we got rid of alcohol then it would be tobacco then guns, neither of which are food also.

gdulli• 11 years ago

Those standards are only one factor in the decision. Americans need/want alcohol badly enough that they wouldn't tolerate it being illegal. People can start consuming one type of oil vs. another without even knowing the difference.

You can never look at one similar aspect of two very different things and make any conclusion about inconsistency or hypocrisy. It's an incredibly oversimplified attitude.

alpha1234• 11 years ago

The answer is money and greed [1].

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Healing-Suppression-Manipulat...

ahallock• 11 years ago

The gov just cherry picks/jumps on the bandwagon for certain things and calls that progress, while at the same time subsidizing industries promoting bad health and the obesity epidemic. Real change won't come from authoritarian bans but from a cultural shift and people caring more about their health.

tertius3• 11 years ago

And when people don't do that, the government has a reason to get bigger... And that's what we have, a complacent populace.

the_ancient• 11 years ago

One should never attempt to apply logic to government actions, for government is devoid of all logic.

cowpig3• 11 years ago

The U.S. market size for palm oil is 2.6 billion pounds (1.2 billion kilograms) annually, he said. He expects that to increase by half a billion pounds a year once trans fats are eliminated.

This is really, really bad news.

http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/Whats_the_issue.php

arbitrage• 11 years ago

Do you have any impartial sources on the subject? www.saynotopalmoil.com doesn't seem entirely objective in the matter.

baldfat3• 11 years ago

WWF? http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/palm_o...

kylecesmat• 11 years ago

A quick google search on the matter will reveal many sources. Though not the most professional news syndicate, VICE ran a great story a few months ago on the environmental impacts of palm oil in Indonesia.

https://news.vice.com/article/indonesia-is-killing-the-plane...

ptx• 11 years ago

National Geographic: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141009-orang...

bottled_poe• 11 years ago

The difference being that this transfers the cost outside of the US economy.

acaloiar4• 11 years ago

To select just one of their arguments--that palm oil's production results in deforestation/climate change--one can make the same sort of argument about nearly any industry. E.g. if solar power companies of the future were to deforest mass swaths of land to make way for large solar farms, then one might argue that the solar industry contributes to climate change. It's a poor argument because the production of solar energy in no way necessitates deforestation; similarly palm oil production does not necessitate deforestation, animal cruelty, and non-sustainable production methods.

I'm not arguing for or against palm oil. I know virtually nothing about palm oil; I'm simply criticizing the source.

samastur• 11 years ago

Borneo used to be covered in forest that was home to one of richest habitats in the world. If you fly over Malaysian part of Borneo now (don't know about Indonesia since I wasn't there, but apparently it is following Malaysian lead), you will see palm plantations for miles and almost no old forest.

There is stil some forest left for orangutans and other endangered species, but it is under constant pressure from expanding plantations.

kokey2• 11 years ago

Currently the biggest pressure on demand for palm oil is for biofuels. The result has been a significant recent and planned expansion of palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. It doesn't help that many countries now have a mandatory biofuel component. I think the potential increase in demand for replacing trans fat is probably not that big compared to what comes as a result of demand for biodiesel.

jgrowl2• 11 years ago

You're right that there other contributing factors with the production of any product. I feel like you still have to take them into consideration though.

Many are specifically worried about palm production because a lot of the areas that are being deforested are also peatlands. They burn the entire area which doesn't just burn the trees, but also a huge amount of peat. This releases a crazy amount of CO2.

You could argue that it isn't palm production's fault and that they shouldn't be burning those areas. As long as it is profitable it will continue though.

tobylane• 11 years ago

Growing palm oil doesn't necessitate deforestation in the same way that growing vegetables doesn't require pesticides. But the commercial way of making them does require them. In the context of the industry of palm oil, not growing it at home, it is factually correct to say it involves deforestation, major damage to wildlife and in a small way some climate change.

furyg32• 11 years ago

The deforestation has to stop, I've traveled in Indonesia both personally and professionally and have seen the devastation that illegal (but government tolerated) deforestation causes.

At the same time abandoning palm oil is both extremely impractical and causes numerous other sustainability problems. Palm oil has incredibly high yields per hectare when compared with other oil crops, which is important to consider when discussing it's 'sustainability'. It's yeilds are something like 3-5 tons per hectare per year, while soy/sunflower/others are less than 1 ton/ha/yr. Not to mention the human impact, it's a cash crop for many small holders who's livelihood depends on it. For these reasons, even very vocal environmental organizations like GreenPeace stop short of calling for boycotts... the focus needs to be on producing it sustainably.

Consumers need to demand that the palm oil in their products is sustainably produced e.g. via the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) or otherwise. Unfortunately even knowing if palm oil is in your product or not has been difficult, and even brands who use sustainably produced palm oil are hesitant to draw attention to the the oil in their products.

I've worked closely with this program on technical projects, and while it certainly has a number of flaws, the accountably is much higher than for conventional palm oil. I'm really hopeful that research into other methods (Algae oil production) will be more economical/efficient/sustainable, but at the moment it's still theoretical. :(

cowpig3• 11 years ago

It sounds like you are well-informed on this issue. I'd like to ask you more about it but I can't seem to find any kind of private messaging functionality on HN and you don't have an email address in your profile :O

saranagati• 11 years ago

how did this become a topic of sustainability? it was banned due to health concerns.

CyberDildonics2• 11 years ago

Educating consumers seems like a pretty big hurdle. I think it would make a lot more sense to ban importing palm oil from Indonesia unless it can be proved to be sustainable.

baddox• 11 years ago

Also, if you're cynical like me, then the palm oil industry might be a good place to start looking for why these regulations were created.

CyberDildonics2• 11 years ago

Trans fat is really bad news. It is a preservative that is hugely detrimental to health. Palm oil is separate and deforestation is a separate problem from that.

Keeping something that hurts people legal because another country is destroying forests is not a workable plan. Indonesia needs to be dealt with separate from the issue of trans fats.

free2rhyme214• 11 years ago

Bingo.

hellbanner• 11 years ago

Got any other sites on the sustainability of foods? (or a website of your company?)

pbreit2• 11 years ago

Phew! I thought that was going to say palm oil is unhealthy. All the stuff listed on that page is improvable.

rm_-rf_slash• 11 years ago

Huh, so apparently processed foods will be harder to make.

What a shame.

tswartz• 11 years ago

Pros and cons to everything. Replacing trans fat with palm oil will likely increase the negative impact some of that industry has on the environment.

https://news.vice.com/article/indonesia-is-killing-the-plane...

Omni5cience• 11 years ago

I'll just leave this here: https://news.vice.com/article/indonesia-is-killing-the-plane...

notNow• 11 years ago

"As for frying, palm oil is expected to be a go-to alternative"

That's like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, pun intended!

niuzeta• 11 years ago

I still don't quite get it; couldn't they have just mandated the usage/inclusion of trans-fat in product, and let the consumers avoid it? By the same standards, we're still letting people smoke and drink.

Vraxx7• 11 years ago

It's already required for them to label it, but there's several problems with that solution that we've been dealing with since that was mandated.

For one, if you have less than 0.5 grams per serving in your product you can label it as 0 grams of trans fat. This is a problem because serving size is arbitrarily determined by the producer of the product, which with a small enough portion size can still leave trans fat in significant portions while labeling it at zero grams. Other tricks exist like using different types of oils (trans and regular oils) in different manufacturing plants and calculating the average amount over all locations the product is produced. The other issue with this is that even relatively small amounts (relative to how much food we consume) can be very detrimental to your health.

The other issue is related to the first and that even consumers that want to avoid trans fats can have trouble doing so if they don't realize the first point I made, and the only way to avoid that is to scan every ingredients list for partially hydrogenated oils.

dagw• 11 years ago

For one, if you have less than 0.5 grams per serving in your product you can label it as 0 grams of trans fat.

Simple fix. Require transfats to be reported in milligrams instead of grams

jessriedel• 11 years ago

Vraxx has some good point (although a rebuttal is that you could just round transfat up to 1 gram unless it's below some very low threshold like 0.001 g).

But more generally, I think the argument might be "the cost benefits of transfats are very slight, and greatly outweigh the health risk, such that a very small fraction of consumers would choose transfats if they were well informed". Obviously this would need to be backed up with a cost-benefit analysis which tried to honestly estimate consumer preferences (rather than assign them preferences paternalistically), and I have do idea whether that has actually been done.

krisdol• 11 years ago

Trans fats had been ruled not fit for human consumption. There are few ingredients that have no consequential benefit to ingesting. Even drinking alcohol has some benefits, and nicotine is the most widely used nootropic in the world (though I can't defend cigarettes, they're categorically bad, but on the way out in society).

carapat_virulat3• 11 years ago

You can probably still buy trans fats, if you really want to eat it. You just won't find it in food shops labeled as food, because it's not safe enough to be considered food.

protomyth• 11 years ago

Since this is by regulation and not statue, what's to stop the next administration from simply changing its mind?

adventured• 11 years ago

The practical context of it all. Once most of the food industry moves away from it, the cost of reintroduction and the well known health dangers (terrible PR headlines), are what act to prevent companies from bothering to lobby about it. The companies spend large amounts of money to move on to alternatives, and that's that.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 11 years ago

“I don’t know how many lives will be saved, but probably in the thousands per year when all the companies are in compliance,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

"Saved" in this context means what, living 3 months longer because your heart disease is slightly milder than it would otherwise have been?

hasenj• 11 years ago

Shouldn't there be some kind of regulation on products that use a lot of sugar? Specially those sold in large quantities ..

listic• 11 years ago

Like sugar itself?

drivers99• 11 years ago

They could start by putting a % value next to it, like they do with other nutrients.

logicallee4• 11 years ago

wow - that is amazing. An outright ban. No, "strict labelling laws", no "strict regulation" in the amount or limitation on the kinds of foods that can still have it. Ban.

I'm surprised!

maxerickson5• 11 years ago

It is not an outright ban. As the fine article says:

Food companies will be able to petition the FDA to gain approval of specific uses of partially hydrogenated oils if they have data proving the use isn’t harmful. Companies will have until June 2018 to comply with the FDA’s determination either by removing trans fat or gaining a waiver.

logicallee4• 11 years ago

I went on the title - I'm a busy guy! (Okay, I did skim.) Still, what you quoted is quite different from how I thought something like this would go down. In particular the standard of proving it isn't harmful is quite high!

I would have thought consumers would be allowed to choose it in certain cases, despite its being harmful. (As they can in other cases.) Or, a small amount might have been allowed even though it is obviously deleterious, e.g. in foods consumed in small amounts and which are obviously exception and not considered healthy.

tjr• 11 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if every company that wants to is able to produce "data" which "proves" that their use isn't harmful...

totony• 11 years ago

But submitting something like this has a price and requires a lot of time to be put into the proposal...

tomjen35• 11 years ago

You are surprised the government wants to ban something?

I am only wondering which lobbyists have payed for this.

LordKano8• 11 years ago

Does anyone else remember when the Center for Science in The Public Interest pressured everyone to move away from saturated fats to trans fats?

The people leading the charge on this are the primary reason why we went to trans fats in the first place!

ams61105• 11 years ago

Exactly. I have really lost faith in the FDA.

Saturated fat bad. Trans fat good. Trans fat now VERY bad. Saturated fat actually OK.

Eggs bad. Eggs good.

Coffeee bad. Coffee good.

Sacharrine causes cancer. Sacharrine OK.

Meat bad (especially red meat). Meat good.

I now just eat what I want, and don't worry about it unless I start vomiting.

stephengillie• 11 years ago

Bread is simultaneously healthy and not healthy.

tkyjonathan• 11 years ago

Be safe and go low-fat whole plant vegan. Statistically, the healthiest option for you.

CWuestefeld2• 11 years ago

Don't forget salt and sodium. The gov't is still trying to work up sodium regulations, while the scientific evidence supporting it withers and dries up (kinda like a salted slug)

digikata• 11 years ago

IIRC, Eggs went from bad to good due to changes in industry accepted feed. Not due to misapplied science (well maybe misapplied at the point of the high-cholesterol feed construction).

I don't think is is the best link, but it was quickly available: http://www.nutraceuticalsworld.com/contents/view_online-excl...

Really it points out the disconnect between industrial food production vs human health and, in this case, a nice story about how one disconnect was resolved.

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

What do you expect them to do? Evidence at the time suggested food X was bad. Should they spend another fifty years running trials to make sure, discover it was indeed killing people, and yes we knew about this fifty years ago sorry we didn't say anything sooner?

It's a tough position and I sympathize with them. I suspect no matter how soon they do or don't pull the trigger, hordes of people will wind up incensed.

tomjen35• 11 years ago

Everything causes cancer. Somehow we are okay with this level of scientific knowledge.

pbreit2• 11 years ago

Eating whole foods in moderation works pretty well.

drzaiusapelord4• 11 years ago

Not too long ago Carl Sagan and others were on TV breathlessly begging people to worry about global cooling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#1970s_awareness

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/01/global-cooling-compila...

Obviously, research changes and consensus changes. Being wrong in the past doesn't mean you're wrong today. Or being right in the past doesn't mean you're right today.

LordKano8• 11 years ago

That's precisely why science needs to continue for its own sake and not as a tool to push political agendas.

Just think how bad things would be if someone had taken that 70s era belief in global cooling and used it as a justification to require us to dump more CO2 into the atmosphere to mitigate it.

anon13853• 11 years ago

Not too long ago Carl Sagan and others were on TV breathlessly begging people to worry about global cooling.

No he wasn't: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/07/28/if-you-wish-to-make-...

There was never a widespread consensus about global cooling:

A 2008 paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society actually reviewed the climate research published in the 70s and concluded that "global cooling was never more than a minor aspect of the scientific climate change literature of the era, let alone the scientific consensus" and "emphasis on greenhouse warming dominated the scientific literature even then."

WUWT is a climate change denial site run by conspiracy theorists. It's not a good place to get facts about anything.

jerf2• 11 years ago

I actually think this is not just a sort of wild accusation... it's a really important point.

Why should I take the new rules seriously when the old rules were so, so very wrong?

I do not have an unmeetable standard... a clear, direct apology explicitly stating that the previous standard was the result of bad process, combined with clear statements of what is being done to improve the process and ensure this doesn't happen again would be fine.

In the meantime, though, I will not permit these people to just sort of tip-toe away from what they have (collectively) done to us, nor am I particularly impressed by efforts to change the consensus at a speed that to my eyes appears carefully calculated to ensure that nobody ever actually has to apologize, or even admit that they were wrong. In other words, at a speed that clearly indicates they're perfectly fine with millions more dying of preventable diseases rather than admit clearly that they were wrong.

Unsurprisingly, I'm not inclined to account that as "virtue", nor to pay very much attention to what they have to say now. If you care about your health, ignore the government standards and do the research to build your own consensus based on the latest science coming out, which is in ever-greater dissonance with the decades-old "official" consensus. Don't wait for our political leadership to calculate how they can move without ever having to admit fault!

(Yeah, I'm pissed about this. If the nutritional consensus forced on us for decades really is wrong and really is, as I rather suspect, the primary cause of the obesity epidemic, this is, fully literally, Nazi-scale evil unleashed on the world. Millions of lives cut short, millions upon millions more with their quality-of-life trashed. I can personally name names for both those categories; the latter category includes damned near my entire immediate family, and they're working pretty hard on getting moved into the first one, and I simply can't convince them of the real problems with the entire authority system for their entire lives telling them something else. It would put the US government right up there on the 20th century death toll list... and that is a hard list to get on to because the competition is quite stiff! Every day they dither around trying to figure out how not to have to admit fault is that much worse.)

JoeAltmaier4• 11 years ago

I'm particularly impressed with the force of this announcement - scientists haven't reached a consensus that trans fats are safe. That's it? That justifies a ban? Sounds like they're hedging their words now, so when they're inevitably wrong again they can blame 'the scientists'.

CreRecombinase2• 11 years ago

To whom is an apology owed, by whom, and for what? The best science at the time indicated that saturated fats were killing people(which was true), and so public advocacy groups lead campaigns to lower the consumption of saturated fats. It turns out the replacement is also killing people, but it wasn't widely known for a few decades. The reality is that nutrition isn't a priority for most Americans, and our regulations and levels of research funding reflect that. The fact is that it was preferable for most people to continue to eat fatty foods made with substances of unknown safety than to stop eating fatty foods. There was no conspiracy.

marze• 11 years ago

It isn't difficult to examine the science reported to date, combine it with first principles, and have a pretty good idea if a scientific idea is correct or not. By the time regulators have overcome inertia and industry pressure and created a new regulation, the science has been there for a long time.

As for the previously held view (now considered incorrect) that saturated fats are harmful, a similar review of the scientific results at any time over the past 40 years would have shown that the view was based on the flimsiest of actual data, like one correlation combined with a second correlation.

That said, if you are relying on the government and other authorities as the final word on health advice, history suggests a bad outcome.

redblacktree• 11 years ago

Whoops.

vermooten• 11 years ago

You scoring points against the Center??

lmkg• 11 years ago

Yeah, that's how science works.

We start from a position of ignorance, and we incrementally gain new pieces of knowledge. Years ago, we learned about the health risks of saturated fats and moved away from them. More recently, we learned about the risks of trans fats and are now moving away from them. The people at the Center for whatever are updating their position based on the latest findings rather than sticking to outdated facts that have been disproven. I wish more policy-makers would do that.

Our knowledge and understanding of the totality of nutrition and health is still pretty small, in part because there are lots of interacting components and because many aspects of nutrition are correlated with ethnicity and lifestyle. Nonetheless, it has been demonstrated that trans fats are bad for your health, independent of other factors. We shouldn't keep consuming them just because science didn't manage to uncover this fact until recently.

jimrandomh2• 11 years ago

No, this has never been anything but non-scientists using science's name dishonorably. There has been and continues to be a large mismatch between what primary source studies say and what is reaching the public.

ams61105• 11 years ago

But they were 180-degrees wrong on trans fats. They were touted as a healthy replacement for saturated fat.

A fundamental tennent of all heath care/policy is "first, do no harm." If you change or do nothing, people are no worse off than they were to begin with. If you want to change something, you better be damn sure you aren't making matters worse.

lsniddy• 11 years ago

The problem is acting like we do understand nutrition because a few new studies say something is bad. Especially when you start digging into the funding of said studies.

There is very little evidence to prove saturated fats are bad, but plenty to prove sugar is. Yet you don't see the policy makers telling us to eat less corn.

Also trans-fats (the ones that are bad) do not occur in nature which seems to be of the best predictors of whether something is net-good for you or not.

abandonliberty2• 11 years ago

Until scientific literacy improves, we're going to keep running into this wall.

People and organizations are seen as more reliable if they don't waver in spite of facts. Is it hardware, or software? Can we learn to favor those who update their decisions based on validated facts, or is it hardwired in how our brains perceive confidence and reliability?

marincounty• 11 years ago

I don't look at these studies with the same eyes I did as a young man. I have been lied to just too many times. No, I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water, but I am so much more skeptical than I was 15 years ago.

"Years ago, we learned about the health risks of saturated fats and moved away from them."

Yes, we "learned" about a lot of things over the years, and vilified the product to the point of absurdity. 'I can smell my neighbor's cigarette smoke--I will get cancer, or COPD?'. My cholesterol is high--I must take statins?.' 'I think I'm depressed--I must get a prescription of a hetero, or tri-cyclic antidepressant?' 'I'm a vegetarian; I must be healthy? Give me a wheel of that blue cheese, I hear it has penicillin in it, and I can eat it because I don't eat red meat!'

I don't know where the truth lies, and follow most recommendations, and trans fats are probally terrible; I just question these scientific, peer reviewed, doulble blind studies. I don't just call it Science anymore, and they know best. I look at all these studies with an air of skepticism that wasn't in me when I got out of college.

When a doctor, or nutritionist relays some information; I do my homework before accepting the advise as a universal truth.

mbell• 11 years ago

Yeah, that's how science works.

The problem is that various sciences have very different requirements for what constitutes a valid 'discovery'. e.g. In particle physics if you don't have a 5 sigma result you haven't really found something. You often see incredibly weak data accepted into journals in the soft sciences, see the recent 'chocolate makes you thin' faux study as an example.

I think there is a large problem in soft sciences in that they are very quick to declare knowledge with very limited data supporting it. The various dietary sciences are probably the worst offenders at the moment. As you've said we know very little about nutrition and health, so why are we so quick to make definitive statements about it? That sounds like the opposite of science to me.

I'm sure this will be controversial but I'd rather not classify such 'soft sciences' as science at all. I've seen several complete reversals in soft sciences in my life and think that this actually contributes to the general public's mis-understanding and mis-trust of science as a whole. e.g. "Those scientists can't even figure out what I'm supposed to eat so why would I believe this quantum physics non-sense!"

WorldWideWayne• 11 years ago

Yeah, that's how science works.
Our knowledge and understanding of the totality of nutrition and health is still pretty small...

Making policies based on ignorance without acknowledging that ignorance in the slightest is not science, it's politics. Instead of saying "we don't really know anything about this topic" they lobby the FDA to make policies -

http://www.academia.edu/1429225/The_Perfect_Solution_How_Tra...

saidajigumi• 11 years ago

Years ago, we learned about the health risks of saturated fats and moved away from them.

Sadly, we did not as the health risks from saturated fats were incorrect, based on absolutely terrible science. The unprecedented public health initiative that resulted in everyone moving away from saturated fats (and the fat scare in general) did substantial harm to public health.

innguest3• 11 years ago

The Center for Science in the Public Interest sounds more like a group of people using science as a flag of convenience to steer public policy.

As such I wouldn't say they are doing unadultered, capital S, Science. They are, after all, politicians by the sheer circumstance of their own name.

quadyeast• 11 years ago

Margarine was the healthy alternative. The damage done to the American public's arteries must be immense.

madaxe_again2• 11 years ago

Also drove the demise of the great whales. Most of their blubber was used to make margarine.

hackuser3• 11 years ago

I don't remember. Is there some evidence?

I ask because it's popular to claim that the results of scientific research are unreliable, but usually, IMHO, upon investigation those claims are wrong. Either they are conflating the results of one study with settled science, or conflating some popular unscientific rumor with real science.

Also, why focus on the Center for Science in The Public Interest? Who are they?

guelo• 11 years ago

No. Nobody remembers a 25 year old lobbying campaign by a tiny nonprofit. I'm sure whatever propaganda outfit you got that info from paid researchers many hours to dig that one up.

LordKano8• 11 years ago

I'm old enough to remember it. I saw the news reports. I heard about it on the radio.

No researchers were necessary to access my memory.

nsxwolf5• 11 years ago

The food police were wrong and killed a lot of people with trans fats. Can we have our lard back now? Oreo cookies taste like crap with whatever they've replaced the trans fats with.

anon3_• 11 years ago

I thought this stuff was already banned in the 90's.

jokoon• 11 years ago

I live in france and apparently there is no law to force manufacturers to indicate those. I often see "hydrogenated oil", but I don't know if it's possible to get away with those tricks mentioned in the article.

Got coronary disease in my family...

ageofwant• 11 years ago

And so dies the last of Indonesia's remaining natural forests. Covered by cultivated palm trees.

neosavvy• 11 years ago

But what about biscuits!!!

Fried Chicken!!!

Alton Brown recommends using Crisco, he's like a scientist.

buckbova3• 11 years ago

I use white lily self rising flour, buttermilk, and butter flavored crisco in my biscuits and they are phenomenal. I add a little cornstarch for extra crispiness. But I bet they would be better with original crisco before all the changes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisco#Changes_in_fat_content

I've tried with butter and low-fat milk and it just wasn't the same.

I use peanut oil for fried chicken. Not sure if it's healthy or not, I just know it's good for frying.

moron4hire5• 11 years ago

This issue is the most important health and safety issue in the country right now. Add up all of the deaths due to obesity-related diseases and it's an obvious low-hanging fruit for improvement. For all the yellow-jacket journalism surrounding cars or drugs or strangers or vaccines or guns, they are all drops in the bucket compared to heart disease.

But that said, I don't think the FDA or CDC are doing anything functionally significant towards improving the issue. There is a greater underlying question that still needs to be answered: why has the problem continued to get worse, despite ALL efforts otherwise?

There is a gun against the head of 2/3rds of Americans and nobody is asking how it got there and why it's still there. I'm afraid it's because we keep arguing about the shape and color of the bullets and how you should really be better at dodging bullets of you want to stay alive.

hga3• 11 years ago

Not necessarily; another "unnatural" recommendation by our betters, to shift from fats and meats to carbohydrates, could easily be worse, and maybe synergistic.

"Unnatural" in that we were advised to shift from natural saturated fats, and from something resembling the more balanced pre-agriculture diet. And I'm suspicious of mass quantities of unsaturated cis-fats, which I gather weren't quite so common prior to cultivation of oil seeds.

moron4hire5• 11 years ago

Huh? You mustn't have read my post very closely.

buckbova3• 11 years ago

I don't want to tell people how to eat. I'd prefer to let it shake out like smoking tobacco. Over a few generations many wised up and there will be many less smoking related deaths in the future.

But everyone dies of something and who am I to tell you how to live while you're still here?

moron4hire5• 11 years ago

No, I'm not saying I support legislation for this stuff. The problem is that, now that we've mandated healthcare for everyone, it's really only a small jump to mandating healthier lifestyles for everyone. It's even rational: preventive care is cheaper and more effective than treatment. But that's not what they're going to focus on, and it's not really going to work out that way.

cheshire1372• 11 years ago

Maybe I'll finally be able to find snack cakes and biscuits without partially hydrogenated oil. That stuff is everywhere, even when the label proudly claims '0 trans fat!'. Such a crock.

criley2• 11 years ago

The label currently can say 0 trans fat per serving, and what they actually mean is less than 0.5g per serving.

From the prev FDA rule:

Trans fatty acids should be listed as "Trans fat" or "Trans" on a separate line under the listing of saturated fat in the nutrition label. Trans fat content must be expressed as grams per serving to the nearest 0.5-gram increment below 5 grams and to the nearest gram above 5 grams. If a serving contains less than 0.5 gram, the content, when declared, must be expressed as "0 g."

http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments...

danso• 11 years ago

This story is a great reminder that there's a lot of potential for studying Regulations.gov API and writing an interface (and heuristic) for surfacing interesting rules and regulations...the trans-fat rule has been up for comment for long while now:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=FDA-2013-N-1317

Maybe I'm in the minority of people who hadn't heard that this transfat regulation was soon to be implemented (as a former New Yorker, it caught me by surprise)...but there are probably many upcoming rules that are worth knowing about before they get published.

kdamken• 11 years ago

It's strange that they're putting these measures in place when sugar is significantly more damaging to people. High fructose corn syrup would have been a much better target.

a8da6b0c91d4• 11 years ago

Does this mean the end of no-stir peanut butter? I hate that stuff you have to mix all the time.

thaumasiotes3• 11 years ago

I've always used peanut butter that comes separated. It's never reseparated after being mixed, though. Do you keep your peanut butter refrigerated?

a8da6b0c91d4• 11 years ago

Only communist peanut butter need be refrigerated.

Nadya2• 11 years ago

People refrigerate peanut butter?

dragonwriter5• 11 years ago

Does this mean the end of no-stir peanut butter?

Isn't no-stir peanut butter usually peanut butter with added palm oil? Other than the fact that this phase out will likely increase the demand for (and cost of) palm oil, it shouldn't have much effect on that.

a8da6b0c91d4• 11 years ago

The permanently stable peanut butter absolutely requires a small amount of added trans fats. It is not added saturated fat such as from palm oil.

geoffbrown• 11 years ago

ADM, you are going to have to pry the coconut oil out of my cold, dead, greasy hands!

TorKlingberg• 11 years ago

There is something about nutrition that always sparks a 500 comment thread on HN. I am not sure why.

coldtea• 11 years ago

Everybody eats? Not everybody uses Go/Haskell/Lisp/JS/etc?

thescriptkiddie• 11 years ago

But vegetable shortening necessarily contains large amounts of trans fat. Does this mean that currently vegetarian foodstuffs will switch back to lard?

jessaustin6• 11 years ago

Baked goods that require flakiness, and can't use trans fats, probably have to include some lard. Butter alone just doesn't seem to get the job done.

Of course the chemists might come up with some other bizarre substance they can add to food, but I won't be the first to eat it.

U.S. Bans Trans Fat

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