FDA Bans Trans Fat 851
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.
Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syrup? (Score:5, Insightful)
One could argue HFCS is worse than transfat and it is used everywhere. Come on, get on a roll, FDA!
Re:Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syr (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt the Oil Partial Hydrogenators Union has the same pull on capital hill as the Corn Growers Association.
Re:Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syr (Score:5, Insightful)
The agricultural lobby is very powerful in the US. Very powerful indeed. They are not easily crossed.
Re:Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syr (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syr (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syr (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Re:Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syr (Score:4, Informative)
It's not. it's what, 55% fructose, 45% sucrose -- whereas table sugar is a 50/50 split?
Re:Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syr (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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,
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Re:Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syr (Score:4)
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.
Re:Excellent. Now how about High Fructose Corn Syr (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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FYI (Score:5, Insightful)
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This should directly reduce this incidence of heart disease, and is good news for everyone except cost-cutting food producers.
Well, good news for people who want to live longer. But living longer does not always equal costing less.
On a related note, from TFS:
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.
I hate these sorts of figures, because I bet they didn't take longevity into account. People who live longer cost more, because medical costs tend to increase significantly in old age, whether you eat "healthy" or not. People fall and break a hip or get some random treatable cancer or get dementia and need round-the-clock care while the mind breaks down for a decade.
Tho
Palm oil eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh well, the FDA can't do anything about the rainforests.
I look forward to the biased reporting. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:I look forward to the biased reporting. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me ask you this. If you can legalize Marijuana why should a big drink or a Croissant be illegal ?
Re:I look forward to the biased reporting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the weed won't kill you or cost society a fortune in hospitalization fees, whereas the "big drink" and the "croissants" will.
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And so the cycle of "reform" continues (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Re:And so the cycle of "reform" continues (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were interested I'm sure I could document every decision you make today, and criticize your wrong ones in 40 years. Yay.
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This stuff goes in cycles.... Butter is bad, use trans fats.... To Trans fats are bad, use butter....
Not necessarily. If Trans-Fats come back into style at some point, that's a cycle. If not then it was a mistake due to an inadequate understanding of the foodstuff, possibly caused by an inadequate sample size and time, which has now been recognized and adjusted for. So far it doesn't seem as if there'll be a big pro-trans-fat movement in the foreseeable future.
Transfat Banned? (Score:3)
Re:Transfat Banned? (Score:5, Funny)
Cigarettes are already free of trans fat.
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Palm oil? (Score:5, Informative)
Soybean Oil = Allergen not good replacement (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
Devils in their details. (Score:5, Informative)
Instead of banning it, tax it. (Score:3)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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1) Cigarettes - I completely agree with. Ban it or don't. Taxing something to oblivion to compensate for the harm being done by it is pure money-making on people's deaths.
2) Aside from the above (because it directly hurts others than the smoker themselves), what you stick in your gob-hole is up to you. Nothing speaks louder than paying a competitor because they have something not offered by others. But people don't. People are choosing to eat this stuff. And despite obesity epidemics, we simultaneousl
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Cigarettes full stop. this shouldnt even be a fucking debate.
Just remember what happened the last time we outlawed a favorite addiction of Americans. [wikipedia.org]
A complete ban, or just less than .5g/serving? (Score:3)
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.
Mexican drug cartel are ready to jump in! (Score:3)
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?
Re:I do not consent (Score:5, Funny)
go buy some. I'm sure the chinese would be happy to sell it to you.
Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a minor fan of lard, myself. I always feel guilty about using lard, because we've been so thoroughly brainwashed against it. But, lard makes things TASTE GOOD!
Everyone should perform an easy experiment. One morning, fry up some nice shoestring potatoes, or homefries using some bland vegetable oil. The next morning, cook several slices of bacon, and fry those taters in the bacon fat. Lord, there's no comparison - I'll take the taters floating in bacon fat every time!
Now, rendered lard doesn't have the rich flavor of that bacon fat, but still - it makes for a better tasting product than some chemically extraced, tasteless vegetable oil.
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Take 2 tbl spoons of that bacon fat and put it in a pot. Heat it up and add dry rice to it then stir and cook tell the rice goes from white to a kind of translucent.
Add the water, bring to a boil, drop to a simmer, and simmer for 20 min.
Rice turns out flaky and perfect with a hint of bacon flavor. Personally I love it for breakfast. 1cup of the rice and two eggs over easy on top. Great bacon flavor with my eggs and a whole lot less fat and calories.
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:4)
Vegan is not a religion.
And while we're at it, atheism isn't a religion either.
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Bacon fat tastes better, for sure, but with a smoke point of about 370F, it's not for everything. Also the taste is not ideal for some things: sauteeing onions with bacon fat for use on a steak or hamburgers works really well, but I don't like the result for say, french onion soup, butter works best. Vegetable oil with a smoke point of 450F is very handy for stir-fry and other high-temp frying activities.
My only point really is using the right tool for the job. Whether or not something is/is not good for you is difficult to establish with too many $ interests to entirely trust the output. Moderation and calorie counting still seems like the sensible approach until someone can definitively establish that something is actually really bad for you, or else you have a medical condition which requires you to eliminate something from your diet.
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:5, Informative)
I will have to try your experiment, but I am curious if you would like Olive Oil as much as the fat. Vegetable Oil tastes awful, so it is no surprise there.
You can't (or at least you shouldn't) fry anything in Olive oil. It will smoke and degrade into potentially unhealthy chemicals.
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:4, Informative)
You can't (or at least you shouldn't) fry anything in Olive oil. It will smoke and degrade into potentially unhealthy chemicals.
This is only true for lower quality extra virgin olive oil. High quality extra virgin olive oil with low acidity has a high smoke point. Also, virgin olive oil has a smoke point comparable to refined canola oil (only slightly lower), at 199C vs 204C. For reference, there is a chart of smoke points here [wikipedia.org]. Unless you are using extra virgin olive oil, you are safe frying in light olive oil at about 199C.
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Depends on the temperature. With care you can most certainly deep fry in olive oil. You have to be careful to keep it very cool for deep frying but it does work. The results are also frankly delicious. I usually deep fry in pure sunflower oil since I like the taste compared to plain vegetable oil.
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:4, Informative)
You can't (or at least you shouldn't) fry anything in Olive oil. It will smoke and degrade into potentially unhealthy chemicals.
That's pretty much complete bunk. Here: http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/w... [oliveoiltimes.com]
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Actually - I like olive oil quite well. But, it seems to me that olive oil has it's uses, and animal fats have their uses. Those uses overlap a lot, but for something like my fried potatoes, I much prefer the lard or bacon fat. Olive oil is most better tasting and better for you than common "vegetable oils" found on the grocer's shelves.
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:5, Interesting)
I use light virgin olive oil to cook rice and most dishes. Almost anything except baking can be done with either water, soya sauce, and/or a good quality olive oil.
Veggies work best if steamed in a microwave, in terms of nutrients.
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Olive oil is fine on bread and salad but if you use anything above a low heat it just smokes.
Nope. http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/w... [oliveoiltimes.com]
Yes to lard (Score:5, Interesting)
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... [wisconsin.gov]
Hell, it was illegal to sell margarine here for many years.
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a bunch of reasons why a switch back to animal fats isn't going to happen.
First is lobbying by the likes of Monsanto (who produce all the GM crops that go into the oils like Canola and Soybean that will still get used as part of the oil mix even with the trans-fat ban)
Second is the years of anti-animal-fat FUD that has to be overcome to convince people that animal fat is somehow OK.
And third is pressure from vegetarian groups who pushed some of these chains to ditch animal fats in the first place.
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're right to be concerned about the rainforests due to what is already an increasing demand for palm oil.
However, I put the blame on business looking for monoculture farming, and a generally unsustainable US consumer culture. It's not a secret that Americans have stretched resources to and past the breaking point; that we have demanded everything be constantly available, and cheaper every year. It should be obvious to anyone with basic arithmetic skill that that cannot continue indefinitely.
I realize that regulation is now a dirty word, but that is, in fact what is needed. I realize that the international scope of the problem will make that difficult, but the scale of the problem, the size of the disaster looming ought to make it a priority.
I'm sure someone will weigh in, pointing out that shareholder value demands frosting in a can, at the expense of our global carbon sink. Please. Go ahead and make that point.
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're right to be concerned about the rainforests due to what is already an increasing demand for palm oil.
However, I put the blame on business looking for monoculture farming, and a generally unsustainable US consumer culture. It's not a secret that Americans have stretched resources to and past the breaking point; that we have demanded everything be constantly available, and cheaper every year. It should be obvious to anyone with basic arithmetic skill that that cannot continue indefinitely.
I realize that regulation is now a dirty word, but that is, in fact what is needed. I realize that the international scope of the problem will make that difficult, but the scale of the problem, the size of the disaster looming ought to make it a priority.
I'm sure someone will weigh in, pointing out that shareholder value demands frosting in a can, at the expense of our global carbon sink. Please. Go ahead and make that point.
Flame bait? Seriously? I don't agree that our society is unsustainable, but that's a point for discussion not modding into oblivion. Of course I believe that the way to sustain our society is through recognizing the costs of pollution, deforestation, and the massive release of green house gasses into the atmosphere and using regulation and tax incentives. Blasphemy on this site, I know. And the way to get to sane regulation is to make our government more transparent and to make a constitutional amendment that corporations are not people. People are people and should have rights. Corporations are legal fictions that don't have a natural death and can't be punished.
As for the haters of regulation, we ran that experiment (and sadly are getting ready to run it again.) US rivers were polluted to the point that nothing lived in them. We had "smog days" when we were advised against going outside and exerting ourselves. Rivers caught on fire. I lived through this shit and it saddens me to see people think of it as "the good old days." Of course Libertarians have a solution to that. "Private ownership." So who gets to own the atmosphere? The ocean? Who gets to own the rivers, lakes, aquifers, glaciers (while they last), and rainforests?
Bad regulation sucks. Over regulation sucks. No regulation sucks too. Regulation is like code. Code bloat is bad but the solution is not "no code." The solution isn't "throw it all out and start again" either. The solution is iterative improvement based on real world feedback and improved transparency.
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This is one of my favorite put-up or shut-up discussion points. Since 2004, Certified Sustainable Palm Oil has been available to the market. Over a decade later, a very small percentage of palm oil sold is produced via sustainable, non-destructive methods. Why? Because it costs more. Rather than support the RSPO by buying sustainable palm oil, slacktivists just boycott palm oil altogether rather than rewarding the industry for doing the right thing. The hypocrisy is mind boggling. Why would anyone change th
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests .... (Score:5, Funny)
Rainforests are a complete waste. It will be far better world once they are gone.
I agree. Why the hell are we wasting rain on the forests? There are deserts in California that could use it.
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Then you should also sign a card saying you are not entitled to medical care to treat potential illnesses caused that have direct links to the digestion of trans fats, unless you pay for it yourself.
I'm all for "it's my body" and all that, I honestly am, but not at the expense of others.
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Then you should also sign a card saying you are not entitled to medical care to treat potential illnesses caused that have direct links to the digestion of trans fats, unless you pay for it yourself.
Sure thing. I'm not entitled to that.
I'm all for "it's my body" and all that, I honestly am, but not at the expense of others.
Agreed.
Re:I do not consent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I do not consent (Score:4, Interesting)
No, she didn't (Score:4, Interesting)
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Theoretically (and ONLY theoretically), SSA and Medicare are paid for by SS/Medicare taxes. And since the income taxed for those programs has a cap, the "rich" could not possibly be paying into them enough to keep the programs solvent while "everyone else" gets "way more than they paid in".
Note that for many years SSA/Medicare
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Did what she paid for it cover the cost of what she got? Those SS and Medicare tax rates were mighty low back in the 60's. SS (with its early too low taxes) didn't start until 1935 and Medicare didn't even start until 1965. Those first generation SS and Medicare retirees made out like bandits. Nope, Ayn Rand almost certainly leached more out of them than she put in.
Re:I do not consent (Score:4, Insightful)
So you are against:
Smoking, all forms?
Chewing Tobacco?
Excessive hours posting on Slashdot, playing video Games, etc?
Fast Food?
And and all non-prescribed drugs, including Weed?
Cars that go faster than, say, 65 mph?
Rock climbing or any other dangerous sport?
And we aren't' talking discouraging, we are talking prohibiting by force of federal law.
So you are down with all this and more because, "...but not at the expense of others.."
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So you are down with all this and more because, "...but not at the expense of others.."
I am for him not having to pay for the consequences of people who do those things, if he doesn't want to. I believe they should be allowed to do it, and agree they shouldn't get to do what they want at the expense of others.
Re:I do not consent (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I do not consent (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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and if your behavior costs me with higher taxes and healthcare premiums for your care
I agree in principle with what you say but does that mean we should outright ban all risky activities? e.g. skateboarders are far more likely to break a leg than I am and thus present a potential burden on the medical system. There needs to be a rational line somewhere.
Sometimes we need to accept things as a donation to societal well-being, and by that I mean we don't all reduce to identical meatbags sitting in a cylinder being drip fed an ideal amount of perfectly healthy an nutritious proteins.
Everything
Re:I do not consent (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you should also sign a card saying you are not entitled to medical care to treat potential illnesses caused that have direct links to the digestion of trans fats, unless you pay for it yourself.
Well, okay. Then YOU should sign a card saying you are not entitled to medical care to treat illnesses after you live past the average life expectancy of the general population, unless you pay for it yourself.
I'm all for "it's my body" and all that, I honestly am, but not at the expense of others.
Then pay up if you live long! Seriously.
This is generally the problem with people who make these arguments. There are lots of studies that show that medical costs associated with "unhealthy behaviors" also tend to result in EARLIER DEATH. Meanwhile, there are plenty of studies that show that total medical costs increase significantly with age.
Which means that the greatest cost to society is generally due to the "healthy" people who live to 95 and have to have multiple joint replacements, break hips here and there, have chronic degenerative illnesses that might take 10 or 20 years to kill someone, have a few rounds of minor cancer treatments over the years, and require many years of round-the-clock care after their minds succumb to dementia until they finally die.
Meanwhile, that poor fat guy who ate terribly cost a hell of a lot in diabetes treatment in his 50s, but then he was nice enough to save money for society by having a heart attack and dying at age 62, right after his retirement party.
In sum, when you actually take into account the extra medical expenses caused by LIVING LONGER, it's usually enough to make "healthy" people more expensive over a lifespan compared to people with "unhealthy" behaviors. (This goes for smoking, obesity, etc.)
So, if you're talking about annual premiums for insurance, sure -- I'm with you: make people who eat trans fats pay more if it's actually going to increase short-term medical expenses.
But if you're looking at overall societal costs for people over their lives, be prepared to pony up when you end up living longer and costing more for your "healthy" lifestyle.
(P.S. I don't use trans fats and haven't really used them much ever in my cooking. I don't give a crap if they disappear from processed foods, because I generally avoid them. But this has no bearing on whether your argument is wrong.)
Re:I do not consent (Score:4, Interesting)
by now we've all consumed enough of them to potentially suffer
Not likely. While I certainly agree that trans fats are bad, I think there are things that people consume that are much worse for them that they consume more often. Take for example refined sugars, or pure/mostly pure simple carbohydrate breakfasts (which if you eat cereal or bread of any variety for breakfast, then that describes you. That also includes any variety of bread/pasta throughout the day.) The message of avoiding (for example) eggs and bacon for breakfast in favor of cereals, waffles, or pancakes was the wrong one, which the FDA only finally realized just a few months ago.
I honestly think that is doing more harm to most people than trans fats are. Believe it or not, simple carbs raise your cholesterol and triglycerides far more than fats and dietary cholesterol, and the reason why is because your liver has to make up for the unsaturated fats that you aren't consuming, and it produces all lipids/cholesterol as a packaged deal.
I'm actually a living example of what I just described, by the way. After switching to just eggs and sausage for breakfast every single day, my cholesterol is now normal without taking any kind of statin drugs, and I used to be on a heavy dose.
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No, I don't, actually. This is all based on advise I took from a doctor after being diagnosed with NAFLD. The simplified message they gave me was "eat less sugar." But I looked it up and found things like this:
http://www.webmd.com/heart-dis... [webmd.com]
And this:
http://drhyman.com/blog/2014/0... [drhyman.com]
And of course, an NIH whitepaper that I can't find at the moment.
Anyways, knowing what I already knew about calories, and the fact that I was already consuming fewer calories than my basal metabolic rate, meant I had to shift m
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I could give up my toast, but then what would I slather my butter onto? ...
There's always your lover.
Re:I do not consent (Score:5, Interesting)
I see you still haven't bothered to learn the definition of "socialism".
Re:I do not consent (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not to mention, if we're going to ban things that are bad for us, where is the ban on all tobacco and alcohol?
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That was my point. They even banned alcohol at one point and reversed it when they realized how stupid it was.
Then your "point" is silly, because this is not analogous to prohibition. Nobody wants trans fat. There is not going to be a black market. The only advantage of trans fat is that it appears cheap (because the expensive externality of heart disease isn't readily apparent to stupid people). The overhead and risk or running a black market would remove the cost advantage.
Re:I do not consent (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I do not consent (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:I do not consent (Score:4, Informative)
If you want healthier but less tasty and more runny fats, eat unsaturated fats (vegetable oils) - if you want less healthy but more tasty, thick fats, eat saturated fats (animal fats). If you want to try and save money by trying to morph unsaturated fats into saturated fats and wind up with something that will kill you, eat trans-fats.
Re:I do not consent (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I do not consent (Score:5, Informative)
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 [fda.gov]. 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.
Re:I do not consent (Score:4, Informative)
No, it is not true.
But once again you misstate the story.
The FDA did not declare walnuts to be a drug.
The FDA -did- send a warning letter to Diamond Foods warning them that they were overselling their product, and crossing a legal line in doing so.
The FDA warning stated Diamond Foods was effectively marketing its walnuts AS a drug due to the claims it was making in its marketing in its attempt to sell the walnuts. That is a far different thing from declaring all walnuts to be a drug. Companies frequently make claims about the benefits of their products, including food companies. But there is a limit to what is allowed, and Diamond Foods went beyond it.
Among their claims were that their walnuts could "inhibit tumor growth", "reduce incidence of breast cancer", that they could "treat major depression", and "reduce chance of stroke".
Diamond Foods was overselling their product by making several false or unsubstantiated medical claims, to the extent that they crossed into territory properly defined as "marketing a drug for medical treatment purposes".
And as a result Diamond Foods settled with the FDA and corrected its packaging and marketing.
Link to the actual warning letter: http://www.fda.gov/iceci/enfor... [fda.gov]
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It's not as simple as "butter is good for you", but here is a decent link:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ma... [harvard.edu]
I'm not sure what you've been eating instead of butter, but if it's margarine, by all means ditch the stuff and buy a pound of butter. Margarine is full of trans fats (or at least, it used to be), and while most nutrition studies are full of caveats and qualifications, it really is pretty damn near universal that the trans fats are just horrible for you. Margarine makers have been switching away from t
Re:I do not consent (Score:5, Informative)
What has transfat in it that you want?
First, it's important to note that foods can be sold as "trans-fat free" even if they contain 0.49 grams of trans fat per serving, because they're allowed to round off to the nearest gram. You need to check the ingredients list for the word "hydrogenated" to know for certain - if there are no hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, then it will not have any trans fat.
Just about anything that's deep fried commercially, either prepackaged or restaurants. There are exceptions, of course, but it's commonly used in commercial cooking because trans fats resist going rancid (bacteria and mold have just as much difficulty metabolizing it as your body does) - it lasts longer and is therefore cheaper.
Since trans fats are semisolid at room temperature, they are often found in vegetable-based spreadable fats. Margarine is basically pure trans fat. Shortening and frosting (spreadable fat mixed with sugar and color) are also likely to contain it, if not be entirely made from it. naturally, anything made with shortening like pastry crusts will have trans fat in it as a result.
Non-dairy creamers can contain trace amounts. Microwave popcorn is possible because the kernels are in a solid lump of trans fat that melts when heated. Milkshakes and the like can have quite a lot of it.
Any kind of commercially produced baked good - again, trans fat resists going rancid so it helps the shelf life. Cookies, cakes, crackers, etc.
So yeah, unless you're a strict vegan who only eats stuff from your own farm for "decades", you've almost certainly eaten something with added trans fats.
=Smidge=
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It's like you weren't even paying attention!
I haven't eaten trans fat in decades and I haven't even been trying. What has transfat in it that you want?
Try finding fortune cookies without ... Looked everywhere and gave up. Selfishly I find myself cheering for the FDA ban because I want fortune cookies without trans fat.
You claim to have been able to avoid trans fat for decades without even trying. He wants to buy fortune cookies without trans fat. He claims that they don't exist. The ban means he will be able to buy fortune cookies without trans fat. Something he can not do currently.
That fortune cookies can be made without trans fat is completely irrelevant.
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If you don't know that organic is a joke, then allow me to illuminate the issue for you. The inspections for whether food is or is not organic are basically non-existent. You file some paper work and the fact of the matter isn't audited.
Beyond that, what you actually have to comply with assuming you were audited is not what people think. Lets say I'm growing organic vegies of some description... mostly what I have to do is not use certain types of pesticide. That's pretty much it. The system is not a WHITE
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you still don't understand the tragedy of commons do you?
or that your decisions impact others?
total individual freedom to be as stupid as you want regardless of the consequences to those around you is (ie, freedumb) is not sustainable, nor ethical.
not that that is surprising given your frequent shilling for fossil fuel industries on this site.
Pretty sure I know what tragedy of the commons is and you don't.
It refers to things that are considered no ones property being abused because doing so yields near zero benefits for the person making the effort. It has no bearing on people making individual choices that only have a direct affect on them.
BTW the solution to the tragedy of the commons, is to render them private property. You know sort of the way private dwellings are usually well maintained while public parks often become cesspools.
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Well, they needed room for all the ethanol crops.
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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
Re:I thought this was already banned (Score:5, Interesting)
In the past few years, I don't recall coming across a single product that had any trans fat.
FDA had mandatory labeling for transfats, which contained a loophole. You could put a label stating "0g transfat" if your product contains less than 0.5g of transfat per serving. If you define your serving size as 1g than your product can be made of nearly 50% transfats. Many bakery products, particularly the ones with long shelf life do contain transfats and can be labeled as "0g transfat". That's why some manufacturers use a label "No transfats" to indicate that there are indeed no transfats in their product.
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Yeah because Republicans never grease the wheels of their donors.....moron.....
But, do they use trans-fat?
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The so called "nanny state" exists because we're all sick of corporations cutting corners to make a few bucks.
As a society we can collectively determine the standards at which businesses operate. It's called democracy, not a nanny state.
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Enironmental wise, the objection is likely based in the process of 3rd world countries cutting down forrests to plant monoculture palms for oil. Animals that relied on the forrest are then out of a habitat and since it's a monoculture the first disease or fungus that adapts specifically to those palm is going to wipe them out.
Healthwise I believe it's basically an issue of being an oil that is very high in saturated fat. Which is why it's so useful, the high saturated fat content allows it to be a solid at