by Jonathan Benson
Natural News
The federal government is finally acknowledging that industrially processed trans fats are damaging to human health and don’t belong in the food supply. Trans fats, which are completely synthetic and highly toxic, are a major contributor to the heart disease epidemic that’s now the number one killer in America.
After dragging its feet on the issue for years to accommodate the processed food industry, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has finally and reluctantly issued a ruling that trans fats are no longer on its “generally recognized as safe” list. Also known as GRAS, this coveted classification is the holy grail of the processed food industry, as it allows manufacturers to use additives indiscriminately without having to first consult the FDA for approval.
This monumental decision by the FDA won’t come into effect for another three years, though, which is highly unfortunate from a public health perspective. Millions of Americans will continue to gobble down trans fat-laden processed foods for no other reason than to give food corporations extra time to come up with another more than likely toxic replacement.
Hydrogenation process to create trans fats involves use of metal-based catalysts
Trans fats, as you may already know, typically hide in processed foods under ingredient names preceded by the words “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated.” So-called vegetable oils like soybean (which isn’t even a vegetable, by the way), cottonseed (this definitely isn’t a vegetable) and canola are heated at high temperatures under immense pressure using metal catalysts such as nickel and cobalt to create solid-at-room-temperature “fats” that don’t exist in nature.
The oil of soybeans, cottonseed and canola, of course, are naturally liquid at room temperature, which makes them difficult to incorporate into foods that are meant to stay solid rather than melt. But the hydrogenation process transforms these oils so they stay semi- or fully solid at room temperature, mimicking the state of naturally saturated fats such as coconut and palm.
It’s a disgusting process, to be quite frank, and one that could easily be avoided if food manufacturers just used butter, coconut oil, palm oil, lard or a number of other fats that naturally remain solid at room temperature. But taxpayer-subsidized junk oils like soy and canola are far cheaper, it turns out, hence the chemical industry jumped all over the trans fat trend once hydrogenation was discovered.
Just because a product says it contains “zero grams of trans fat per serving” doesn’t mean it’s truly trans fat-free
At least the FDA has stepped up to the plate and done something, though, even if it’s too little, too late. By June 2018, processed food manufacturers selling products in the U.S. will have to completely phase out the use of trans fats, which a recent study published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology declared to be “an important cause of cardiovascular disease and the resulting clinical end points such as strokes and heart attacks.”
Some of the biggest processed food offenders, including Betty Crocker and Bisquick, both brands owned by General Mills, claim they’ve already been “working diligently” to remove trans fats from their products, and that many of their products now have “zero grams of trans fat per serving.” But it’s important to remember that labels bearing this claim aren’t necessarily trans fat-free, as food manufacturers have learned how to simply jockey around their serving sizes in order to keep trans fat content below the labeling threshold, which the FDA has established as 0.5 grams.
“Suppose a product contains 0.4 grams [of trans fat] per serving and you eat four servings (which is not uncommon). You have just consumed 1.6 grams of trans fat, despite the fact that the package claims that the product contains zero grams of trans fat per serving,” explains the advocacy page BanTransFats.com.
