FDA: trans fats no longer "generally recognized as safe."

[sbr]

 

[Tonitrus]

You'd be hard pressed to buy a food ingredient or product with transfats in it over here.

Though I've no idea what the situation is with restaurant food/eating out.

Many food producers have taken trans fats out of their products. Labels will often say something like "Trans fats = 0" to stress the fact.

Except they can have up to .5 grams/serving and still claim "0".  Plenty of stuff out there with "partially hydrogenated whatever" in the ingredients, but say they have zero trans fats.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Really, interesting contrast.

As far as I'm aware there's no legislation against them, just consumer pressure, government health messages and supermarkets advertisings products as not containing them.

That contrast doesn't exist so much I don't think, garbon is just mistaken. The vast majority of processed foods no longer contain trans fat, the manufacturers have either quietly phased them out or explicitly advertise the product does not contain trans fat. Since the mid-2000s trans fat content is down 74% I think all of the big time fast food chains and many of the other big casual dining chains have publicly said they no longer use trans fats.

The areas where you still see a lot of them are in baked goods. Trans fats became popular for both structural and price reasons, partially hydrogenated oils have a really good profile in terms of melting/burning point and etc that make them especially well suited for certain specific applications. It really doesn't hurt a McDonald's much to advertise they are phasing trans fats out--they actually never used that much of them and anywhere they did use them, fried food and etc can easily and economically be made with 0 trans fat. Baked goods it's going to be more of a challenge because you can't just remove the partially hydrogenated oils from the recipe and keep everything else the same. Large scale bakers will more or less have to completely retool their process and do millions of dollars in testing to get the flavor correct.

Outside of baked goods, microwave popcorn is also a major source of trans fat, and only the Orville Redenbacher brand (of the major brands) is made without trans fat. One of their reps mentioned in a news article the other day that because of the different consistency and burn/melting point of the substitute it took them a really long time to replace their butter substitute that had trans fat in it with one that doesn't, as they had issues with oozing and burning from say, regular butter. The company mentioned that it cost millions of dollars and took about six years to successfully find a replacement that didn't contain trans fat and they also added "and we aren't saying how we did it" because obviously they want their competitors to expend a similar amount of resources on their own efforts.

But it's the large scale bakers and the other popcorn brands that'll have the most difficulty because their products are made in large factories and parts of the process will have to be retooled if you swap out an ingredient with different physical characteristics. The stuff like the Kroger bakery products should probably be easier to phase trans fats out of, because while a lot of their stuff is made to a standard recipe they still have fully functional bakeries in those stores. They aren't reprogramming or rearranging an assembly line, but instead are just mailing out new baking instructions to their stores.

[Ideologue]

"and we aren't saying how we did it" because obviously they want their competitors to expend a similar amount of resources on their own efforts.

The vaunted efficiency of the market.

[Admiral Yi]

[Ideologue]

Oh, come on.  Cop.

[Admiral Yi]

WTF are you talking about?  It's a perfect example of the profits from R&D leading to a superior outcome for consumers.  How can you possibly misconstrue this as a case of market inefficiency?

[Ideologue]

WTF are you talking about?  It's a perfect example of the profits from R&D leading to a superior outcome for consumers.  How can you possibly misconstrue this as a case of market inefficiency?

To my mind, performing that R&D three or four times because of proprietary industrial processes that cost millions of dollars to develop seems a mite wasteful.

[Admiral Yi]

Point taken.  But the only alternatives are eating trans fat loaded popcorn or waiting your whole life for the People's Design Bureau to figure it out.

[Ed Anger]

Mmm, popcorn from the People's Popcorn Factory #3.

[KRonn]

You'd be hard pressed to buy a food ingredient or product with transfats in it over here.

Though I've no idea what the situation is with restaurant food/eating out.

Many food producers have taken trans fats out of their products. Labels will often say something like "Trans fats = 0" to stress the fact.

Except they can have up to .5 grams/serving and still claim "0".  Plenty of stuff out there with "partially hydrogenated whatever" in the ingredients, but say they have zero trans fats.

One big problem is that the food industry lobby has too much power. They sway decisions, lobby Congress and influence the FDA too much and is likely why such exclusions exist.

[DGuller]

You'd be hard pressed to buy a food ingredient or product with transfats in it over here.

Though I've no idea what the situation is with restaurant food/eating out.

Many food producers have taken trans fats out of their products. Labels will often say something like "Trans fats = 0" to stress the fact.

And often they will lie.  You can claim 0 grams of trans fats when you have less than 0.5 grams per serving, which can still add up to a shitload of trans fats.

[garbon]

Hey I heard that a label can say 0 trans fats but still have up to .5 grams a serving. Can anyone confirm?

[DGuller]

Hey I heard that a label can say 0 trans fats but still have up to .5 grams a serving. Can anyone confirm?

I just posted that immediately above.  Can't you fucking read?

[Eddie Teach]

That's called "rounding".