FDA to Ban Artery-Clogging Trans Fats

[Rapunzel]

This all started with seat belt and helmet laws.

Progressive indeed.

I was thinking the same thing the other day.  Drip, drip, drip... they just keep taking more, more and more personal decision-making away.  Turning all of us into the zombies that walked out of the flooded New Orleans after Katrina in a daze not having a clue what to do or where to go unless someone told them.

[Cincinnatus]

Aligncare, before you answer my question about government authority being exercised for "our own good" you might want to consider this thread:

Obama announces "Home Protection and Affordability Act" (ObamaHousing)
http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,119231.msg482981.html#msg482981

[flowers]

for later

[DCPatriot]

I was thinking the same thing the other day.  Drip, drip, drip... they just keep taking more, more and more personal decision-making away.  Turning all of us into the zombies that walked out of the flooded New Orleans after Katrina in a daze not having a clue what to do or where to go unless someone told them.

It's easier to dust...than it is to wipe...than it is to scrub...than it is to scour.

We should have dusted.

[evadR]

Reminds me of that study years ago on low fat vs high fat diets an its effect on heart disease.
Facts revealed that there was NO difference in the rates of heart disease. Doctors were dismayed. The paradigm they had followed for literally decades was challenged.
Their conclusion: The study must have been flawed. The facts did not fit the model, therefore, the facts were wrong because they knew their low fat paradigm was right.

[Rapunzel]

Reminds me of that study years ago on low fat vs high fat diets an its effect on heart disease.
Facts revealed that there was NO difference in the rates of heart disease. Doctors were dismayed. The paradigm they had followed for literally decades was challenged.
Their conclusion: The study must have been flawed. The facts did not fit the model, therefore, the facts were wrong because they knew their low fat paradigm was right.

It actually turned out the low fat diet had unintended consequences in an increase in gallbladder disease........

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bjs.1800830140/abstract

Abstract

Many epidemiological studies support the assumption that diet is of great importance in the pathogenesis of cholesterol gallstones1, but its role in the origin and development of non-cholesterol gallstones is less clear. In humans, a low-fat, low-protein, high-carbohydrate diet seems to increase the development of pigment gallstones2.

and......

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/uncategorized/carbohydrates-and-gallstones/

The job of the digestive tract is to break down the food we eat and prepare it for absorption, then to carry out the absorption. Fat entering the small intestine is mixed with bile acids – made in the liver – that emulsify the fat, making it better able to be further broken down with lipases, enzymes that break it apart into its component fatty acids. The bile acids-fatty acid emulsified combo forms into micelles, molecules that allow the fat to be absorbed into the cells lining the small intestine. The bile acids then break off and recirculate back to the liver.

The liver produces bile, which is composed of bile acids, cholesterol, and a few other substances. This bile travels from the liver to the gall bladder – a little sack tucked beneath the liver – through a small tube called the hepatic duct. The gall bladder stores the bile and waits for a fatty meal to enter the small intestine. When the fatty meal arrives, the gall bladder squeezes the bile out through the bile duct (another small tube) that joins with the hepatic duct to form the common duct and empties into the upper end of the small intestine. So when the fatty meal arrives, the gall bladder douses it with the bile it has been storing for just this occasion. The bile then mixes with the fat and breaks it down for absorption as described above.

If very few fatty meals come down the tract – for example, if the owner of the GI tract is following the Ornish or other low-fat diet – the bile sits around in the gall bladder, unsquirted. The liver continues to make bile, but slows down a little in its production. The cholesterol component of the bile tends to become more concentrated with time and can ultimately become supersaturated and precipitate as a small cholesterol gallstone (cholesterol accounts for 80-90% of gallstones). If the stone stays in the gall bladder, it typically doesn’t pose a problem. The problem arises when the stone makes its way into and occludes the bile duct, or, even worse, if it travels further and blocks the common duct. In either case, terrible, colicky pain ensues ending up with a trip to the surgeon.

If one eats fatty foods often, then the gall bladder constantly empties itself and generally stays free from gall stones. If a one doesn’t eat much fat because one is following a low-fat diet or one is on one of the modified fasting programs (Optifast, Medifast, etc.), then one’s gall bladder doesn’t empty and the bile sits around supersaturating. Then if one blows it out, so to speak, on a big steak dinner, or a giant cheeseburger, or any kind of fatty meal, the gall bladder squeezes this sludgy gunk that may contain a few small stones into the bile duct, and, bingo!, one has a serious problem all of a sudden. One of the big problems people have with the fasting programs and with low-fat diets is a high incidence of gall bladder disease. We did a large maintenance study a few years ago in our clinic for the weight-loss drug Orlistat (now Xenical) during which we had to put patients on a low-fat weight-loss diet for six months, then they were randomized onto on of a number of doses of Orlistat or placebo. Before they started the six month low-fat diet, the subjects all underwent a gall bladder ultrasound looking for stones. Anyone found with stones couldn’t participate in the study. Those without stones started the diet and had another ultrasound at the end of the six months on the low-fat diet, but before starting the medication. I can’t remember how exactly many patients developed gall stones during that six month period without going back through the data, which is stored 1000 miles away right now, but I do remember that it was a considerable number, something like 10-20% it seems

snip......

[aligncare]

I do not think you can prove this statement: Labels that today most people find indispensable to their shopping and food consumption practices. Some, maybe.

As for this: We had CONSUMER products for a couple hundred years. What took so long to put basic nutritional information on the labels? Perhaps because consumers did not care but some Liberal consumer advocacy group(s) did and used their political muscle to impose their will on us all.

Now please address the central issue: do you agree the government has the authority to require the private sector to require things like nutrition labels and ObamaCare because they are in our best interest? Do you perceive any limit to that power?

I like labels. So, labels, yes, Obamacare, no. (Quess I'm just at Quisling at heart)

[aligncare]

You guys crack me up.

You read nutrition labels all the time, every one of you. Whether it's to check for salt content or the amount of protein or whether there's certain minerals in the food you're eating – you all look.

You talk about healthy diets and vitamins and natural foods, or whether a producer is using hormone in the chicken feed. And then you grumble about government setting industry standards to do particular things, like provide uniform nutrition labeling.

Get back to me when you've got your own hypocrisy in check.

[EC]

Don't buy much processed food at all (tinned tomatoes is about it), but the odd ones we do buy the labels get checked very thoroughly. There are certain preservatives that trigger migraines in both myself and my younger daughter, and a coloring agent that makes the missus violently ill.

Without the labels it would be trial and error. And somewhat uncomfortable.

Thank you for the study link, Rap! Interesting read. For some reason I always thought the gall bladder triggered every time you eat, regardless of the fat content of the meal. 

[Oceander]

I like labels. So, labels, yes, Obamacare, no. (Quess I'm just at Quisling at heart)

Labels are exactly the sort of thing the government should be doing: reducing the level of information asymmetry that exists between sellers of food and buyers of food.  Consider, without labels, and with an uncooperative manufacturer, a buyer who wanted to know what was in some item of food would have to carry around some sort of assaying equipment in order to find that out.  You may laugh, but an individual with a peanut allergy has to be very suspicious of the foods s/he eats because even a little can kill them.  That situation would be enormously inefficient - imagine having to carry the equivalent of a testing lab with you every time you go to the supermarket - and also potentially lethal, as many people would simply take their chances, or would act on the (erroneous) belief that they could "just tell" if something was tainted.  Before the Food and Drug Act, unscrupulous sellers routinely diluted milk with things like formaldehyde, which is, shall we say, not the most healthy thing to drink; the trouble was, it was very difficult to tell the scrupulous from the unscrupulous ahead of time.

Requiring food manufacturers to disclose the contents - and relevant nutritional makeup - of their products is one of the few areas where government interference produces a net benefit because the additional inefficiency created by the government's activity - such as additional taxes to pay for more gov't workers - is far outweighed by the increased number of market transactions that take place because of the reduction in informational costs.

The problem here is not that gov't is forcing sellers to disclose trans fat, but that it's forcing them to remove it from their products - without anything like the evidence about the deleterious effects of formaldehyde - and that creates a net inefficiency because the costs, direct and indirect, from this gov't action far outweigh the benefits to be gained.

In other words, this is like the difference between the government making sure everyone plays fairly and by the rules, by enforcing those rules, and the government picking the winners and losers without regard to who plays better than whom.  Labelling requirements simply enforce the rules needed to maintain a fair and level playing field for buyers and sellers of food products in the free market; banning trans fat is picking winners and losers.

[Rapunzel]

It's pretty easy for me.  I almost never buy anything in a "box"....... I eat mostly fresh fruit (in my smoothies) and fresh vegetables in my dinner salad.   I buy most of my groceries at my local health-food store and I can take or leave meat... though I did have some tasty Fajita's for dinner tonight.  I get it at a local Mexican restaurant that cooks everything with fresh ingredients.  I buy organic eggs and whole organic milk from grass-fed beef and I normally drink a protein/fruit smoothie made with almond coconut milk for breakfast  - which holds me until afternoon when I have my dinner.  Oh and I buy local honey to use in my tea.  About the only thing from a box is my peanut butter granola bar I eat with my night-time vitamins and a glass of milk before bed,.  I almost never eat potatoes, I do like a good yam for dinner once in a while.   Don't eat boxed pasta, I'll buy fresh pasta at a local Italian store when I want pasta.    A healthy diet is actually pretty easy and doesn't require a lot of label-reading.

BTW my husband was allergic to MSG.  My habit of cooking healthy goes way, way back... when we ate out if he wanted clam chowder on Friday night he always had to ask first if it was home-made or canned and if home made did they use MSG - and if we went out for Chinese food we always had to check first if they served non-MSG......  Another thing many of the Ranch Dressings contain MSG as does almost all beef boulion and chicken broth.... so it was just easier for us to make everything from scratch and afterwork he would always have an apple for a snack on the long drive home from work...    Everyone would be healthier and thinner if they stayed to the outside aisles of the grocery store and away from fast food restaurants.

[Lando Lincoln]

I feel so unprotected and vulnerable... 

[Rapunzel]

I forgot to mention. Instead of buying the unhealthy whipped margarine. Buy real butter and let it sofen to room temperature and then add a equal amount of walnut oil, mix it well in your food processor and place in a container in the fridge. The taste is wonderful and it is much healthier for you. I buy also buy organic butter (since I don't use that much butter) but any butter works fine...Walnut oil is a excellent sources of omega-3 fatty acids.  There was a time we all ate a much higher ratio of omega-3 in our diets, today it is heavy on omega-6 which is part of the problem with heart disease.  Grass-fed meat is higher in omega-3's and corn-fed is heavy on omega-6.    One thing people don't know is since cows were not meant to eat corn (they are grass-eaters) the corn gives them indigestion - and since indigestion causes them to tense up they add antacids to their feed.  The beef industry is one of the major uses of antacids in this country.  A diet heavy in corn fed beef, corn fed pork, corn fed chick, etc., is a diet heavy in omega-6.  We need to balance it out with more omega-3 and omega-9's for optimum health.

[Rapunzel]

I feel so unprotected and vulnerable... 

Amazing how our grandparents ate butter, buttermilk, cooked with lard, etc.,churned real ice cream, etc.  and lived long lives without a single label to protect them.

[aligncare]

Labels are exactly the sort of thing the government should be doing: reducing the level of information asymmetry that exists between sellers of food and buyers of food.  Consider, without labels, and with an uncooperative manufacturer, a buyer who wanted to know what was in some item of food would have to carry around some sort of assaying equipment in order to find that out.  You may laugh, but an individual with a peanut allergy has to be very suspicious of the foods s/he eats because even a little can kill them.  That situation would be enormously inefficient - imagine having to carry the equivalent of a testing lab with you every time you go to the supermarket - and also potentially lethal, as many people would simply take their chances, or would act on the (erroneous) belief that they could "just tell" if something was tainted.  Before the Food and Drug Act, unscrupulous sellers routinely diluted milk with things like formaldehyde, which is, shall we say, not the most healthy thing to drink; the trouble was, it was very difficult to tell the scrupulous from the unscrupulous ahead of time.

Requiring food manufacturers to disclose the contents - and relevant nutritional makeup - of their products is one of the few areas where government interference produces a net benefit because the additional inefficiency created by the government's activity - such as additional taxes to pay for more gov't workers - is far outweighed by the increased number of market transactions that take place because of the reduction in informational costs.

The problem here is not that gov't is forcing sellers to disclose trans fat, but that it's forcing them to remove it from their products - without anything like the evidence about the deleterious effects of formaldehyde - and that creates a net inefficiency because the costs, direct and indirect, from this gov't action far outweigh the benefits to be gained.

In other words, this is like the difference between the government making sure everyone plays fairly and by the rules, by enforcing those rules, and the government picking the winners and losers without regard to who plays better than whom.  Labelling requirements simply enforce the rules needed to maintain a fair and level playing field for buyers and sellers of food products in the free market; banning trans fat is picking winners and losers.

Ocean, these things we know. Saturated fat raises LDL levels. Elevated LDL levels are associated with coronary artery disease. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States.

Manufacturer's ubiquitous use of hydrogenated fats (ie saturated fats) in foods we would have never anticipated finding saturated fat makes it nearly impossible to consume normal (or natural) levels of saturated fats associated with a healthy diet.

There is nothing wrong with eating saturated fats. What's wrong is finding saturated fats in every food that we eat because it benefits food producers to have a longer shelf life. Now, if everyone ate like Rapunzel – no problem. But not everyone eats like Rapunzel. So what do we do? Wait for producers to voluntarily limit saturated fats in the foods they make? Chances are they won't unless nudged.

[Lando Lincoln]

Well, time for my midnite bacon snack...

[aligncare]

Amazing how our grandparents ate butter, buttermilk, cooked with lard, etc.,churned real ice cream, etc.  and lived long lives without a single label to protect them.

Today's modern family has 2 working parents, commute hours to work, and eat food from boxes, plastic bags and cans.

Our grandparents lived in a time before fast food and before highly processed foods. They ate normal evolutionary type of diets.

No comparison.

[Rapunzel]

I disagree with the suggestion in this article to replace with canola oil (rapeseed) - I prefer using olive oil, rice oil or coconut oil for cooking - depending on what I am cooking.  Rice oil has a very high heat tolerance which oilve does not and you have to like the taste of coconut oil (which I do with fish).  If you have ever read anything from Doctor Barry Sears (the Zone Diet) you find out how he made his discoveries.  He came from a family where the men never lived past 50 - they ALL died of heart disease.  Dr. Sears was actually a cancer research doctor and when he started showing the signs of the same heart disease as the rest of his family he was determined to find why this was happening... his discoveries of how, exactly, omega fatty acids come into play changed his life... actually saved his life as he reversed his heart disease by increasing his omega-3 and omega-9 and decreasing his omega-6... and the fantastic side result was a loss of weight without actually dieting...   I read his first book about 15 or 16 years ago and it changed a lot of how I cooked, though I have followed a healthy eating routine for at least 40 years.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/06/omega-6-fats-linked-to-increased-risk-of-heart-disease/

Omega-6 Fats Linked to Increased Risk of Heart Disease

A study shows that not all good fats are the same when it comes to protecting your health
By Alice Park @aliceparknyFeb. 06, 2013

    Omega-3s as Study Aid? DHA May Help Lowest-Scoring Readers Improve

A study shows that not all good fats are the same when it comes to protecting your health.

For decades, the message about fats has been relatively simple — reduce the amount of oils and fats you eat from animal and dairy products (less red meat and cheese) and substitute them with healthier fats from plants or fish (olive oil, omega-3 fatty acids). The difference came down to the specific type of fats that make up these foods — animal and dairy fats tend to be saturated, which means all of the free bonds available in a chain of carbon atoms are bound to hydrogen atoms, while plant fats are unsaturated, meaning some of carbon atoms have double bonds with each other. Saturated fats are more likely to build up within artery walls and form plaques that can trigger heart attacks.

But in the latest study on fats published in the BMJ, researchers found convincing evidence that not all plant fats are created equal and that linoleic acid, or omega-6 fatty acids, may be associated with a higher risk of early death from any cause, as well as increased risk of heart disease and death from heart-related conditions

.

The study is actually a reanalysis of data that had not been included in the original publication of results from the Sydney Diet Heart Study, a trial that was conducted from 1966 to 1973. For more than three years, researchers at the time followed 458 men aged 30 to 59 years old who had a history of heart disease; about half were told to replace the saturated fats they consumed from animal and dairy sources with omega-6 linoleic acid, which is commonly found in safflower oil or margarines made from it. The other half were not told to change their diet in any way. When that study was published in 1978, researchers noted an increased risk of early death from any cause among the omega-6 group, but did not break down the data by what caused the deaths.

(MORE: Study: ‘Good’ Fats Even Better for the Heart Than We Thought)

So Dr. Christopher Ramsden, a clinical investigator at the National Institutes of Health, who was interested in understanding the effects of linoleic acid on heart health, contacted one of the original authors and reviewed data that had not been included in the study. This information involved deaths from heart-related causes, and the new analysis showed that the omega-6 group had a 17% higher risk of dying during the study period from heart disease, compared with 11% among the control group.

The American Heart Association (AHA) currently recommends that people replace 25% to 35% of their daily saturated-fat intake with foods containing unsaturated fats, such as canola and olive oils. The AHA further breaks down the unsaturated-fat advice by suggesting that people devote about 5% to 10% of their daily calories to foods containing linoleic acid. The recommendation is based on a review of the available data.

(MORE: Study: Eating Omega-3s May Help Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk)

The latest results, however, raise questions about that advice. Ramsden says the findings provide some refined understanding of unsaturated fats, which come in different chemical forms that may have varying benefits or risks. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that the [current advice] is necessarily completely wrong,” he says. “What happened is that in the 1960s all polyunsaturated fats were considered the same. They were grouped together under one mechanism of being able to lower blood-cholesterol levels. Then, over the ensuing decades, it became clear as science progressed that there were multiple types of polyunsaturated fats, and these compounds potentially have distinct biochemical and health effects.”

There has been some evidence to suggest that omega-6 fatty acids, for example, may trigger inflammation, a condition that is linked to an increased risk of heart problems, while omega-3 fatty acids, found in deepwater fish like salmon, tend to inhibit inflammatory reactions. Ramsden says the results highlight the need to study dietary ingredients in more detail, rather than lumping them together and assuming they have the same effect on the body.

(MORE: Can Olive Oil Help Prevent Stroke?)

Recognizing that need, the AHA says it is considering re-evaluating all its dietary recommendations, and will make the issue of polyunsaturated fats part of this assessment. Reviewing the dietary advice as a whole is important, says Alice Lichtenstein, a spokesperson for the association, since changes in one area could have unexpected, and potentially harmful, effects on other eating habits. When health organizations advised people to lower their intake of saturated fats, for example, many replaced the fats with carbohydrates, which can increase risk of diabetes and lead to higher levels of another type of fat in the blood, triglycerides. “One of the things we learned is that we need to look at the whole picture,” says Lichtenstein. “Just looking at one individual component puts undue emphasis on that component, and may lead to unanticipated consequences. We need to look at dietary patterns rather than individual nutrients or individual food components.”

Whether the association will change its advice about consuming linoleic acid isn’t clear yet, but Ramsden says the results of the latest study “could have important implications” for the way people eat if they want to stay heart-healthy.

[Rapunzel]

Well, time for my midnite bacon snack...

Don't tell us you like bacon ice cream??? (the though makes me nauseous)...

true story - when I was in the 5th grade I "discovered" Bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwiches.  For two months that is all I would eat, I insisted our house keeper make them for me for breakfast, lunch and dinner... finally my stepfather said no more and she was forbidden to give them to me any longer.  Once in a great while I still really enjoy one...

[EC]

I forgot to mention. Instead of buying the unhealthy whipped margarine. Buy real butter and let it sofen to room temperature and then add a equal amount of walnut oil, mix it well in your food processor and place in a container in the fridge. The taste is wonderful and it is much healthier for you.

  Thought we were the only ones to do that!

We prefer to use olive oil mixed with unsalted butter though, about 1/3 to 2/3. About the same mix as you'd use for frying off leftover potatoes.

[Rapunzel]

Thought we were the only ones to do that!

We prefer to use olive oil mixed with unsalted butter though, about 1/3 to 2/3. About the same mix as you'd use for frying off leftover potatoes.

Olive oil is okay, but the walnut oil gives it a really nice flavor. 

BTW Humus  is a wonderful snack food - and you can make your own (though it is easier to just purchase at the store) but with some raw red or yellow peppers or jicama or even celery it is a wonderful healthy snack and humus is a very “slow” carbohydrate because it's a low-glycemic food -  which is good for anyone who has problems with blood sugar, it is high in fiber and is healthy for the colon and the heart and it's high in vitamins and the important omega-3 fatty acids.

[NavyCanDo]

It's funny you should mention turning the bottle or box over and reading the label.

Conservatives opposed the 1965 Fair Packaging and Labeling Act as too much government intrusion.

* crickets *

Big difference between  listing the ingredients and nutritional value on a label  AND Government controlling the recipe.

[Rapunzel]

Big difference between  listing the ingredients and nutritional value on a label  AND Government controlling the recipe.

Bingo,  it's up to us to decide if we want to eat what the box tells us is inside.

 It's the same way I feed my dogs (and why they, too, eat healthy).

[EC]

Big difference between  listing the ingredients and nutritional value on a label  AND Government controlling the recipe.

But people need to be controlled! Government knows what is best for you and you are too dumb to figure it out for yourself!!!

Sarc tag needed on that?

Though a quick scan through the pictures on people of Walmart and it becomes very hard to argue the point.

The thinking is, of course, that by forcing people to eat more healthy, they will stay healthy for longer and health care costs will go down. A healthier population is a more productive population, meaning a greater GDP and more tax revenues. That sound at all familiar?

I can accept the government controlling the recipe of canned or processed or fast foods to a certain extent. Who wants to go to McDonalds and not know what is in the burger and fries? (Arby's somehow gets away with mystery meat - must be a CIA front)
Grading and checking slaughterhouses, including the pink slime - fine. Maybe it is the horror stories I heard as a kid. Maybe it is too many years eating field rats. But the thought that someone not from the company is doing the quality control checks is reassuring to me.

[EC]

Olive oil is okay, but the walnut oil gives it a really nice flavor. 

BTW Humus  is a wonderful snack food - and you can make your own (though it is easier to just purchase at the store) but with some raw red or yellow peppers or jicama or even celery it is a wonderful healthy snack and humus is a very “slow” carbohydrate because it's a low-glycemic food -  which is good for anyone who has problems with blood sugar, it is high in fiber and is healthy for the colon and the heart and it's high in vitamins and the important omega-3 fatty acids.

I love walnut oil. My wife hates the taste. Guess who won that particular discussion.

We adore hummus. Tend to buy it from the local store, dice peppers and garlic really fine and stir them in with a tiny bit of lemon juice. Leave it in the fridge for an hour, then we make pan bread - usually with chick pea flour.