Trans fat ban hailed as life-changing
Move will ‘save many thousands of lives each year’: health advocate
WASHINGTON — When all the talk tends to centre on how the U.S. food system is failing people, it can be easy to forget its successes. But one of those instances has been brought to the forefront Tuesday.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it will implement a new near zero tolerance ban of partially hydrogenated oils, the main source of trans fats.
Food companies will be given three years to phase out the ingredient from their offerings. The decision comes on the heels of a 2013 announcement that a ban was imminent. And it is a very big deal. “It’s probably the single most important change in our food supply, if not in decades, then ever,” said Michael Jacobson, the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “This action alone will save many thousands of lives each year.”
For more than a century, trans fat has been an essential part of the U.S. food system. Almost anything that was fried or baked had it. Foods that were made with trans fat tasted better, and, perhaps even more importantly, lasted longer. No one worried, because no one knew how dangerous that was.
But slowly research started to catch on. In the 1970s and 1980s, studies began to suggest that eating the man-made fat might be tied to heart disease, at least in animals. Consumption dipped, due largely to fear that this effect might carry over to humans.
Then in 1990 a clinical study shook the ground on which so much of the food world stood. It found that eating trans fat led to higher levels of bad cholesterol and lower levels of good cholesterol. It also spurred a whirlwind of followup research, including a study by the United States Department of Agriculture, which the food industry hoped would exculpate trans fat, but did just the opposite. Consuming it, study after study found, was associated with increased risks of heart disease.
By 2003, the government required that all foods made with trans fat carry a label.
Perhaps the most telling sign came in 2006 when New York City banned the lipid from all bakeries and restaurants. The food industry had long complained that removing trans fat would be costly, and replacing it would be very difficult. But eateries managed just fine, swapping out the banned ingredient for various other oils.
“That was really the key,” said Jacobson. “It showed that trans fat could be eliminated from pretty much anything.”
Americans have cut their intake of trans fat by roughly 85 per cent over the past decade. The remaining 15 per cent will be a squeeze for many food companies, which have held out. Those include some well known popcorn, frosting and biscuit makers.
Jacobson has made sure to keep track of them on Pinterest, where CSPI pictures all of the offenders.
In three years, that will no longer be necessary. What was once a staple of most commercially sold food in the United States will soon be phased out almost entirely.