One Down, About A
Million To Go
Somebody pinch me.
The FDA has mandated the removal of partially hydrogenated oil and/or
trans fat from its execrable list of food additives that are GRAS –
Generally Regarded As Safe. In doing so, the agency has taken a teeny
tiny step in the transition from lapdog to watchdog. Of course, it's
a matter of one additive down and about a million to go, but every
journey begins with a single step and this is a good one.
Once upon a time,
human beings ate real food. They lived and thrived on nature's bounty
just as it was provided in farms, fields, forests, oceans and other
natural resources. The only “additives” and “preservatives”
came in the form of salts, spices, herbs and other equally natural
substances and processes. Thus mankind existed for untold millennia.
Granted, it wasn't always easy or convenient. Even after humans
surmounted the need to hunt for their food or to pull it directly
from the soil, they still had to shop for it, often on a daily basis.
Fresh food was, after all, perishable.
And then came “The
Modern Age,” the era of “better living through chemistry.”
“Perishable” food? Perish the thought! Bread doesn't have to get
moldy after only a few days. We can make it last for weeks! We can
put whole meals in a box! A little bit of this and a little bit of
that added to the food supply and words like “stale” and
“spoiled” become practically obsolete! With our “modern”
additives and preservatives, we can extend the useful life of almost
anything. Anything, that is, except the lives of the people eating
the darn things.
One of the biggest
“improvements” in the cause of “shelf stability” was
introduced in the 1950s when scientists began hydrogenating vegetable
fat. The actual chemical process had been going on since the early
part of the century when Proctor & Gamble's “Crisco” hit the
market. A few years before that, French chemists used the technique
to create margarine as a cheap alternative to butter and some
scientists were dabbling with hydrogenating whale oil as a means of
preserving it. But it took the convenience craze of the post-WWII
years to really send hydrogenated products soaring. Within a decade,
it was nearly impossible to find anything that didn't have something
hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated added to it.
I
really don't want to go into a long, pedantic discussion of the
hydrogenation process with all its hydrocarbon chains and double
bonds and talk of cis and
trans configurations.
If you want to know all the chemical details, look 'em up. The short
answer goes like this: hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils
are formed when hydrogen is added to liquid oils to make them solid.
The parts of the equation that really mattered to the consumer were
the parts that made hydrogenated products cheap and convenient. And
food manufacturers were quick to jump on the bandwagon. Through their
“Mad Men”-like advertising agencies, they quickly convinced
harried homemakers that their products were not only more convenient
to use, they were healthier, too.
Butter was bad; margarine was better. Lard was lethal; shortening was
sublime. We got pounded and pounded and pounded with this dreck until
we believed it, aided by a government agency that was so deep in the
pockets of the food industry that it didn't dare say or do anything
to the contrary.
Not everybody drank
the Kool-Aid (which, by the way, contains such wholly wholesome
ingredients as calcium phosphate, Red 40, artificial color,
artificial flavor, Blue 1, and BHT). Back in the 50s, a young
University of Illinois researcher named Fred Kummerow had his doubts;
doubts that were confirmed when he got a local hospital to let him
examine the arteries of heart disease victims. His startling
discovery of high levels of artificial trans fat led him to publish
his first paper on the dangers of artery-clogging trans fats in 1957.
But the food industry steamroller had too much momentum by then and
people like Kummerow were ignored, stifled on the altar of profit.
Fast forward a few
decades. People had begun to look around them and realize, “Jeez,
compared to our grandparents, we're all dropping like flies.” By
the 1990s, enough Fred Kummerows had raised enough awareness that
consumers began rejecting the concept of “healthy” trans fats.
Evidence was mounting that consuming “healthy” trans fats led to
weight gain, heart disease, and even memory loss. In a
cholesterol-conscious society, studies were showing that trans fats
raised LDL or “bad” cholesterol levels in the blood while
lowering the HDL “good” cholesterol. Ooops! You mean the stuff
we've been shoveling into our bodies is not really as healthy as the
guys on Madison Avenue say it is?
Of course, the
puppets at the FDA were still dancing on the strings of “GRAS” as
directed by their Big Food masters, but enough nutritionists and
scientists were beating the drum with sufficient force to be noticed
and consumers slowly turned away from the formerly “healthy”
products of recent years gone by and began returning to things like
bad ol' butter and lard. Never ones to go broke pandering to the
whims of a fickle public, food manufacturers started to fall in step
and march to the new old beat. Ad men were now racing to see who
could slap the most “No Trans Fat” labels on the very products
they had touted as “healthy” just a few years before. True to
form, the FDA began to produce weak mewlings about “limits” so
they wouldn't look as totally inept and superfluous as they really
were. Example? The agency continued to allow manufacturers to include
up to 0.5 grams of trans fat in a product and still label it as
containing “0 Trans Fat.” Just one of dozens of regulatory
loopholes through which profit-mongering food manufacturers continue
to strangle clueless consumers.
The Big Nanny –
aka New York City – enacted a ban on trans fats in restaurant food
back in 2007. A noble effort, but a futile one. Far more New Yorkers
were filling their faces and clogging their arteries with cookies and
pies and cakes and snack foods purchased at grocery and convenience
stores than were ever likely to consume trans fat in a restaurant.
But
now it seems it will all come to an end – in another three years,
anyway. The total ban on trans fats won't take effect until 2018
because the industry needs time to come up with new
excuses.....er......to implement the transition, don't you know? But,
as I said, it's a step in the right direction. The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention estimates that taking trans fat out of
the food supply may prevent 10,000 to 20,000 heart attacks and 3,000
to 7,000 coronary deaths each year. Predictably, Big Food is not
going to go down quietly or easily. According to a statement released
on the heels of the new ban, the Grocery Manufacturers of America,
long a vociferous and contentious mouthpiece for the food industry,
said it would file a petition with the FDA that "will show that
the presence of trans fat from the proposed low-level uses of
partially hydrogenated oils is as safe as the naturally occurring
trans fat present in the normal diet." In other words, they're
going to keep trying to poison people because it's cheap and
expedient to do so.
Don't buy it. I mean that literally.
Don't buy it. Read the label. Anything that says “partially
hydrogenated” fats or oils – I'm looking at you, Jiffy Pop Butter
Popcorn, and you, Pepperidge Farm Coconut Three-Layer Cake, and you,
Blue Bonnet stick margarine, and you, Pillsbury Supreme Buttercream
Frosting – just put it down and walk away. Far be it from me to
suggest that you can make all those things from scratch using fresh,
wholesome ingredients. (Well, the popcorn, the cake, and the
frosting, anyway. Nothing can make that nasty plastic butter-like substance wholesome.) But even if you don't think you can turn into a Suzie
Homemaker overnight, at least look for products that are minimally
objectionable in terms of additives and preservatives. As I
frequently say, I am going to make the undertaker earn his money. I
am not going to let Kraft and ConAgra embalm me while I'm still
alive. And I damn sure don't need to pay Roto Rooter to clean the
detritus of “modern living” out my arteries.
Congratulations, FDA, on finally
growing a pair. Okay, a micro-pair, but a pair nonetheless. Now for
the next step: how about taking a look at Panera Bread's recentlyreleased “No No List” of additives and preservatives and seeing
what you can do there? If you only ban one substance per year, you'll
be busy into the next century. And more of us might actually be there
to see it.
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