"Banning Trans Fat in Processed Foods, but Not Animal Fat"
The years of healthy life lost due to our consumption of trans fats are comparable
to the impact of conditions like meningitis, cervical cancer, and multiple sclerosis.
But if food zealots get their wish in banning added trans fats, what's next?
Vested corporate interests rally around these kinds of slippery slope arguments
to distract from the fact that people are dying.
New York mayor Bloomberg was decried as a meddling nanny
for his trans fat ban and attempt to cap soft drink sizes.
How dare he try to manipulate consumer choice,
but isn't that what the industry's done?
In 1950, a 12-ounce soda was the king-sized option.
Now it's like the kiddie size.
Similarly, with trans fats, it was the industry that limited our choice
by putting trans fats in everything without even telling us, so who's the nanny now?
New York City finally won its trans fat fight,
preserving its status as a public health leader.
For example, it took decades to achieve a national prohibition of lead paint,
despite unequivocal evidence for harm,
but NY led the way, banning it 18 years before federal action.
There's irony in the slippery slope argument
that first, they came for your fries; next they'll come for your burger.
After the trans fat oil ban,
one of the only sources of trans fat left will be in the meat itself.
Trans fats naturally exist in small amounts in the fat in meat and milk,
as I've talked about before.
Animal products only used to provide about a fifth of America's trans fat intake,
but since the U.S. trans fat ban exempts animal products,
they will soon take over as the leading source.
In Denmark, for example, now that added trans fats are banned,
the only real trans fat exposure left is from animal products found
in U.S. dairy, beef, chicken fat, turkey meat, lunch meat, hot dogs,
with trace amounts in vegetable oils due to the refining process.
The question is: are animal trans fats as bad as processed food trans fats?
A compilation of randomized interventional trials found that
they both make bad cholesterol go up; they both make good cholesterol go down;
and so they both make the ratio of bad to good go up, which is bad.
So all trans fats cause negative effects, irrespective of their origin.
They suspect that removing natural trans fats from the diet, too, could prevent
tens of thousands of heart attacks, but unlike processed foods,
you can't remove trans fats from milk and meat because trans fats are there naturally.
The livestock industry suggests a little bit of their trans fats might not be too bad.
But you saw the same everything-in-moderation argument coming from the
Institute of Shortening after industrial trans fats were first exposed as a threat.
The bottom line is that all sources of trans fat should probably be minimized.
The trans fat in processed foods can be banned,
and just adhering to the current dietary guidelines to restrict saturated fat intake,
which is primarily found in meat and dairy as well,
would kind of automatically cut trans fat intake from animal fats.
The reason no progress may have been made on animal trans fat reduction
in Denmark is because the nutrition council that pushed for the trans fat ban
was a joint initiative of the medical association and the dairy board.
They recognized that the economic support from the Dairy Council could be perceived
as problematic from a scientific integrity point of view.
But not to worry.
The medical association expanded the board and funding members
to include the Danish pork industry, the Danish meat industry, the Poultry
and Egg Council, as well as Big Margarine.