Posted on 04/16/2006 9:49:55 PM PDT by neverdem
IT'S never pleasant to learn that an artificial substance in your food might be ruining your health. This is what happened with trans fats when they were "discovered" in the food supply a few years ago, after a high-profile lawsuit against the makers of the Oreo cookie (laden with trans fats, who knew?) captured headlines nationwide.
The publicity pushed the Food and Drug Administration to require that trans fats be listed on package labels starting this year. Producers of cookies, cakes, crackers, frozen foods and margarines, all high in trans fats, thus had an incentive to eliminate them from their products. But Americans would be better protected if the F.D.A. would limit trans fats in all foods.
The problem with the labeling regulation is that it does not cover restaurant fare and other unpackaged food. This giant loophole was exposed by Danish researchers who collected and analyzed food from 20 countries, and whose results were published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers found that there are far more trans fats in McDonald's meals in the United States than in the same McDonald's fare in most other parts of the world.
Trans fats, which are basically a form of hardened vegetable oil, are a staple ingredient in our foods because they're cheaper than butter and they guarantee a long shelf life. Trans fats are also easily manipulated, able to give a Goldfish cracker its crunch, for instance, or make frosting creamy.
Trans fats are worrisome, however, because more than any other macronutrient in the diet they not only raise L.D.L., the so-called bad cholesterol, but also lower H.D.L., the good. (Saturated fat, in contrast, raises both kinds.) A daily intake of five grams of trans fats increases the risk of contracting heart disease 4 percent to...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Good basic article to come up to speed on this.
This is a preposterous figure. One can only imagine what a liberal estimate would be.
Trans fats are toxic. They are a serious health hazard.
A simple way to spot them in the supermarket is to check the label for "partially hydrogenated". If you see it, do not buy the poisoned food!
Considering that I ate all that food for years without knowing that it had these awful trans fats in it and never had anything happen to me, I guess I should be thankful now that they're banned...
Good grief! I have a book on my shelf from a health guru of decades past warning of the dangers of "hydrogenated oils" (same thing) from thirty-five years ago. All those good-for-you margarines that have been sold since the seventies are the culprits. You would have done better using sinful old butter.
Please folks, even though it is the "P.C." thing to do, eating healthy is important. I think it is time our sloth-coddling society to begin holding each other to a higher level of accountability and discipline. Only a gluttonous, self-centered people who does not truly care about those who love become obese. For the love of God and all that is right, if you can't put the bleeping fork down and have some self-respect, AT LEAST do it for the sake of your family. ( yeah yeah... science is evil.... ever since we left the caves it's been all downhill)
"Getting rid of trans fats is an easy fix that could save, by conservative estimates, 30,000 lives a year in the United States...
This is a preposterous figure. One can only imagine what a liberal estimate would be.
In most case you are better with butter than trans fats.
a lot of foods with trans fat could be replaced with vegetable oil. trans-fat is made from vegetable oil, but its chemical make-up is changed so that the trans-fat acts as a preservative, thus the reason its used. Foods made with simple vegetable oil doesn't last as long on the shelfs, begging the question if microbes and fungus wont eat the trans-fat laden foods, why would we ?
I'm sorry. Remember when all high-cholesterol foods were going to kill you at 39, guaranteed (even though the Framingham heart studies, which Lefty reporters claimed showed that, didn't)? I think that was last week, right?
And remember when eating fat made you fat? It's like global warming. There's too much dirty money in science. It's too easy to get a grant trashing the American diet or the American way of life (not that I believe in living on Twinkies). I don't buy it, because I haven't seen a million people die from eating Oreos.
I agree with that. But those of us who have worked in the food sciences have been concerned about trans fats for a long time.
I eat a lot of Oreo's. Been eating them since I was a kid. And? Oh yea, I'm 45.
>>It's too easy to get a grant trashing the American diet or the American way of life (not that I believe in living on Twinkies). I don't buy it, because I haven't seen a million people die from eating Oreos.<<
Not a million from Oreos but but close to that every year from diet.
Diet is a factor is most major causes of death.
Number of deaths for leading causes of death
Heart Disease: 696,947
Cancer: 557,271
Stroke: 162,672
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,816
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 106,742
Diabetes: 73,249
Influenza/Pneumonia: 65,681
Alzheimer's disease: 58,866
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 40,974
Septicemia: 33,865
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm
So if I don't eat Oreo's I can have eternal life in a baggy body suit, with hair growing out of my eternally growing ears and nose? What a fantastic deal.
Food nazis? I remember seeing a docum on Hell Week on Discovery, and the 22-ish guy (who barely could keep his eyes open) was eating....pizza. PIZZA!
Thank you for posting that. I can't help wondering whether this is the 'food hysteria of the week.'
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