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Schwarzenegger Signs Trans Fat Ban
sacbee.com — California will be the first state to ban trans fats in restaurants and bakeries under legislation signed today by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The measure requires restaurants to quit using trans fats by January 2010, and for bakeries to follow suit one year later. Consuming trans fat is linked to coronary heart disease.
Surferess- 138 diggs
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- tomodachi18, on 07/25/2008, -1/+12The Terminator just made McDonnald's eat it, and it was not pretty.
- BevansDesign, on 07/25/2008, -1/+10But, what will poor people eat?
Seriously. Cheap food is full of trans fats. - mnemy, on 07/25/2008, -3/+6wtf? As someone ignorant of the finer points of nutrition... why? And is it easily avoidable?
- rfegurugr, on 07/26/2008, -0/+0See my comment below.
- LegoLooney27, on 07/25/2008, -2/+9*Austrian accent* Eat my healthy food if you want to live!
- parodyerror, on 07/25/2008, -5/+4Its good to see that California is working on this instead of fixing the budget situation.
- JerichoSam, on 07/25/2008, -3/+10Isn't it enough to label products and let consumers make their own choices? Do we really need the government to tell us what we can and can't eat?
- merripen, on 07/25/2008, -1/+4"Food sold in manufacturer-sealed packaging would be exempt."
The major change here is restaurants, which generally don't have those labels. Most Americans don't realize just how terrible the food they are purchasing when they go out actually is.
- merripen, on 07/25/2008, -1/+4"Food sold in manufacturer-sealed packaging would be exempt."
- alapoet, on 07/25/2008, -2/+5I'm with JerichoSam on this one.
People don't need for the government to be their nanny. Give them the facts and let them make their OWN informed choices.
Print trans fat content on the packaging. If it's at a restaurant, put it on the menu.
You can't force people to be healthy. It's as futile as legislating morality. - nontoxyc, on 07/26/2008, -2/+4Trans fats are delicious and I for one would rather continue eating them and take my chances. Ten years from now they'll say trans fats are actually good for you and some other kind of fat is bad.
- akey, on 07/26/2008, -0/+2pretty heavy-handed approach for a marginally dangerous product
- rfegurugr, on 07/26/2008, -1/+0How is this nutritionally relevent?
Because food scientists don't bother to tell you that there are usually more than just one form of the same fat and that certain forms are more common in living things like human bodies than others, or spring up in different proportions than the "same" fats mass produced in some factory. Many food scientists assumed that all chemical forms of the "same" fat acted the same in our bodies because they behaved the same way in lab tests. But this isn't so.
The other problem is that any natural fat like butter fat isn't a single substance, but a mixture of many kinds of fat in different forms and proportions, plus other biologically active chemicals that aren't fats. But food scientists have trouble studying the whole food, so they break it up into more easily studied components, but the components don't always act the same way in isolation than when they're together in the same proportions as the natural food.
The trans fats in the story comes from margarine and shortening made from partially hydrogenated oil from soybeans or corn. It is a "saturated" oil but isn't the same as the natural stuff it replaced because the process creates trans fats that are not common in nature, plus has to be chemically refined, bleached and deodorized before anyone would want to eat it. Restaurants use it because their suppliers market it as an economical alternative to polyunsaturated oil like corn or soybeans because it can be used longer before turning rancid. But medical studies have been appearing that show that trans fats from partial hydrogenation lower "good" HDL cholesterol and raise "bad" LDL cholesterol.
But even medical studies can be tricky, because publicly funded research is becoming increasingly rare, and even researchers sometimes don't question "common wisdom" like saturated fat "bad", polyunsaturated fat, "good" as much as they could, even when their grant money doesn't come from a company like Monsanto or Archer Daniels Midland. What's even sadder is that these stories usually aren't about health at all but corporate interests protecting their turf. The new law exempts "food products sold in their manufacturers' sealed packaging" so your Kellogg's Pop Tarts(R) are safe for now.
Is trans fat as partially hydrogenated oil/shortening easily avoidable?
No, unless you stop eating commercially prepared food that has anything "partially hydrogenated" in the ingredient list. Nutrition labels are misleading because the information is "per serving." What's more, if the amount of trans fat is less than 0.5 grams, the product can be labeled zero trans fat. Adjust the formulation or make the serving size smaller makes the trans fat disappear. Look at a small bag of some fried snack sometime. You might think that's one serving because you eat the whole bag, but the label probably says says two servings if not more. Look at your favorite bakery item that's ready to eat at the store or in the freezer aisle. You'll likely see "partially hydrogenated" or just hydrogenated somewhere in the ingredient list. Same with "cheap" food like instant ramen or that box of macaroni and cheese. The cheaper it is, the more likely it'll have trans fat but the nutrition label probably won't. - Oxygen, on 07/27/2008, -0/+1Apparently Trans Fats Couldn't Get To Da Choppa.
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