US FDA Moves To Ban Trans Fat 520
UnknowingFool writes "Citing growing health concerns about trans fat, the FDA today proposed measures to eliminate it from the U.S. food supply. While trans fat can still be used, the new measures now place the burden on food processors to justify the inclusion of it in a food product as experts have maintained that there is no safe level of consumption and no health benefits. Since 2006, the amount of trans fat eaten by the average American has declined from 4.5g per serving to less than 1g as restaurants and the food industry have reduced their use of it. There will be a 60-day public comment period for the new proposal."
Artificial trans fat, not just trans fat. (Score:5, Informative)
TFA is more specific than the brief above describes.
Re:Is it working? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not the point of removing trans fats. Rather (from the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]) "In humans, consumption of trans fats increases the risk of coronary heart disease[2][3] by raising levels of the protein LDL (so-called "bad cholesterol") and lowering levels of the protein HDL ("good cholesterol")."
Should we not ban something that is directly linked to an increased risk in heart disease? I suppose smoking is also directly linked, but not banned, so I leave that debate up to everyone who isn't me.
What about natural trans fat? (Score:4, Informative)
Trans fats appear naturally in small amounts in things like cream.
Cream, being mostly saturated, zero carb and choc full of fat soluble vitamins is a very healthy food.
There is plenty of reasonable hypothesis that the small amount of trans fats in milkfat has a hormetic effect. It is the bulk trans fats in engineered foods that is toxic.
Re:What about natural trans fat? (Score:5, Informative)
"The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday proposed measures that would all but eliminate artificial trans fats, the artery clogging substance that is a major contributor to heart disease in the United States, from the food supply."
Keyword: artificial. But because that wasn't enough, the article goes on to say:
"Some trans fats occur naturally. The F.D.A. proposal only applies to those that are added to foods."
Re:Is it working? (Score:3, Informative)
Trans fat is about heart disease.
If you want to attack obesity aim for sugar. If you want to loose weight just take whatever sugar intake you are doing and cut it to 1/3rd.
This does affect some of the snack foods we eat today. Including movie theater popcorn, and microwave popcorn. Because of the high shelf life. Many have already moved away from trans fat with the last size reduction.
The real affect will be food with a shorter shelf life and per dollar higher cost.
Re:Is it working? (Score:5, Informative)
The Wiki article and TFA are wrong.
LDL is not the 'cause' of heart disease. It never was. Damage to cells is the cause. Trans fats damage cell which mistake them for saturated fats. Oxidative stress is another mechanism.
LDL raises because it is being generated to transport materials to the sites of damage for repair. Persistent raised LDL is a sign of persistent damage, from things like oxidation, glycation and excess exposure to Miley Cyrus. LDL raising is a response to cellular damage, not a cause. This is why LDL suppressing statins have failed spectacularly to improve human health even while it reduces LDL.
Re:HFC would be a better start (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17441692.2012.736257?journalCode=rgph20#.Unv_7406LCQ [tandfonline.com]
There is a reason other countries outright ban or have quotas for that vile dangerous sweetener
Re:Artificial trans fat, not just trans fat. (Score:4, Informative)
Per TFA the levels of trans fatty acids in the USA population has declined by 58% in 9 years (2009 data, probably lower still now) and per this article [chicagotribune.com] the use of trans fats by the food industry has declined by 73%. Just about all restaurant chains and most packaged food producers have already removed trans fats from their products.
Sounds like an emergency situation that requires an immediate government ban. Or perhaps, the bureaucrats at the FDA were bored and the dart landed on trans fats as the thing to ban today?
Re:Is it working? (Score:5, Informative)
Uh... Transfats cause Heart disease. Not that I like government regulation, but all they are doing here is making a distinction that man made transfats are NOT food, they are an additive. Which is a fact.
Re:Vegans need it (Score:5, Informative)
Partially-hydrogenated oils provide that need
PHVO is NOT cholesterol, and contains no cholesterol. It may cause your body to retain cholesterol, but if your body is unable to make cholesterol, then there is nothing to retain. I am very skeptical of your claim that anybody, including vegans, needs trans-fat. Can you provide a reference to a source? If I google for "vegan" plus "cholesterol", all I see are articles saying that vegans can still have high cholesterol despite their diet.
Even if there are a few rare people that are both vegans and unable to make enough of their own cholesterol, that is hardly a justification to allow this synthetically produced artery-clogging gunk into our normal food supply.
Re:Vegans need it (Score:2, Informative)
LDL is not found in the diet. LDL particles are carriers for fat and cholesterol in the blood. They are made in the liver as a way to transport fat and, especially, cholesterol to the rest of the body. HDL particles (considered the "good cholesterol") are synthesized in the peripheral tissues to carry cholesterol back to the liver. Again, neither LDL nor HDL (nor VLDL, for that matter) come from the diet. They are all synthesized by our organs.
Cholesterol does come from the diet, but a large amount, about 75% according to the googles, is made in the liver. In fact, decreasing dietary cholesterol intake leads to an increase in production by the liver.
There is no known minimally required level of LDL for health. People who carry mutations in both copies of the PCSK9 gene contain no detectable levels of serum LDL and are healthy with very low levels of heart disease.
Partially-hydrogenated fatty acids are completely different molecules from cholesterol. No one needs to eat any partially-hydrogenated oils, vegan or not. Cholesterol, on the other hand, is required by the body, but since the liver can make as much as you need, I doubt that there is any requirement for dietary cholesterol.
tl;dr: Vegans don't need it.
Re:Is it working? (Score:5, Informative)
You don't get to call others "nuts" when you promote LCHF diets which are unproven to be safe and totally unnatural.
I can suggest a few documentaries for you if you like... to begin with, Fat Head [fathead-movie.com]... it was still on Netflix last time I checked it, and most of the actual medical sources I could cite are in his bibliography.
Carbs are the energy we use, don't blame others if you eat more than you use up.
Hoo-boy... not that I really wanted to get pulled into this particular argument, but I may as well ---
1 - Carbs are *not* the energy we use... at least, not carbs as presented in foods. Yes, glucose, which is what we actually use, is a complex carbohydrate, but most of the carbs you eat are in a different form. At its most basic, sucrose, but the majority of the carbs you consume are actually fibres and starches. Your body has to expend energy to convert these to the glucose your muscles and organs can actually use, which is the same thing it does to proteins and fats. The difference is that carbs have a much higher glycemic index, meaning that it takes less energy to be converted to glucose, and it happens faster than it does with fats or proteins.
2 - Consuming something with a high glycemic index triggers a sudden increase in blood glucose levels, which triggers insulin. Insulin regulates the glucose level by causing fat cells to start storing energy.
3 - Fats have amino acids and other nutrients in them that carbs don't, and which your body needs to survive.. The reason they tend to be "worse" is because they tend to be much more calorie dense than carbs, but that's not always the case. In short, you can consume more volume of carbs than you can fats in order to get the same number of calories.
4 - Overeating and lack of exercise is the main reason people are overweight, but it's not as simple as a calculation between calories in and calories out. If you take the straight calories in/calories out calculation, you'll find that almost nobody loses weight as quickly as the numbers say they're supposed to, because of many different factors, including the body tricking itself into starvation mode. Sometimes, you will actually lose weight faster by increasing your calorie input, and increasing the amount of exercise you get.
5 - BMI is a bullshit calculation. It was originally intended to track population trends among French farmers, 200 years ago. In the intervening years, nutrition has improved significantly, and with that, peoples' general average weight has gone up. Quite aside from that, something intended to track population trends should *never* be used as a measure of an individual's health. It's possible to be in the "ideal" bracket according to BMI and be extremely unhealthy, and it's possible to be in the "obese" bracket according to BMI, and be in perfect health.
6 - Low carb-high fat was the prevailing wisdom in the 70's, before the US FDA's food guide came out. The above-linked documentary has a very good discussion of how the food guide we know today came about, but in brief, it was a fad diet promoted by a doctor in the 50's. In the 70's when the food guide came out, it was mostly a political decision, and the fad diet was used as justification for a food guide that was mostly intended to promote American grain and corn farmers, who were a very major lobbying body. It's worth noting that fat has certain amino acids in it that don't exist in carbs which the brain requires to function properly, and the doctor who came up with the fad diet in question ended up committing suicide due to depression. That aside, however, the committee in the 70's that came up with the food guide went through hundreds of doctors before they came up with one who would say what they wanted them to say -- most of the doctors at the time thought high carb/low fat was an idiotic idea.
7 - Perhaps the most damning, the current obesity epidemic started just a couple of years after they changed the
Re:Vegans need it (Score:4, Informative)
>There is no known minimally required level of LDL for health. People who carry mutations in both copies of the PCSK9 gene contain no detectable levels of serum LDL and are healthy with very low levels of heart disease.
Where did you get that from? People with no LDL are dead.
People who have the type of mutation on PCSK9 to enhance LDL receptor activity on cell surfaces enjoy greatly reduced rates of heart disease because there's less LDL running around in the blood (it's being more efficiently taken up by cells) and so less serum LDL => less LDL oxidation => less bad stuff. But the notion that there is none is flat out wrong. The same amount of LDL is reaching the cells, it's just taking less time to get there.
The numbers are given in the second entry in a google search for PCSK9 mutations. 35% difference in takeup. Not 100% as your wrong statement implies.