The New York City Health Department must think the customers of restaurants aren’t smart enough to make good choices about the food they eat. The health department reportedly feels an “ethical responsibility” to forcibly require city restaurants to change ingredients by 2008.
Its media campaign urging restaurants to voluntarily remove trans fat oils from menus failed, so it voted to enforce a trans fat oil embargo. The law could go in effect this December, and it doesn’t require any other approval.
This department led the successful elimination of smoking in New York City public places four years ago, which was a wonderful welcome for many people who don’t tolerate secondhand smoke. This victory must have empowered the department to take on the unhealthful trans fat issue.
But a less authoritarian approach would be to inform consumers of the trans fat grams they would be indulging in by eating those lard-ridden french fries. If customers don’t choose those trans fat menu items, chefs will decide on their own to replace palm with canola oil.
Posted by Angie Holladay
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22 Comments
Trans fat is a particularly insidious ingreadient. It does not come from any food source; it comes from a laboratory. As such, it can be argued that its presence constitutes food adulteration. IT IS WORSE THAN LARD.
AlHs makes a good suggestion – require labeling, particularly pointing out adulterants.
Citizens to government:
BUTT OUT. What I CHOOSE to eat is NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS.
I agree GMC – but truth in labeling is important IMO.
In fact, one important (unrelated) issue is the presence of certain foodstuffs where one might not expect it – notable peanuts. I consider peanut butter to be an essential nutrient; however for some AQNYTHING with peanuts is toxic. So, we need labeling of things like ice cream that contains peanut-derived material.
I see nothing wrong with compelling restaurants to post what is in their food and how it is prepared.
JR -
I agree; I got no problem with knowing what I eat. It’s still my choice, however.
and Ben: The best cooking is done with lard; don’t try to make a truly good pie crust without it. And guess what’s the main ingredient in the center of Oreos? Yup.
I first learned about trans fats in 1974, in a lecture that explained how margarine was made from corn oil. Basically, vegetable oils, which are liquid at room temperature, are comprised of long hydrocarbon chains in which most of the carbon atoms have single electron pair bonds (alkane), while one or two pairs of carbons have double bonds (alkene). If you remove some of the hydrogen atoms and create more alkene bonds, the oils become semi-solid. Add some artificial flavors, and voila! margarine.
Butter and vegetable oil have natural alkene bonds, called cis bonds. Our body fat has cis-form alkene fatty acids. Cis bonds create certain molecular shapes that are recognized by our bodies’ cells’ molecular receptors. (In simple terms we can call this a “C” shape, or a banana shape.)
In industrial dehydrogenation, trans-alkene bonds are preferentially formed, because they have a lower free energy than cis-bonds. But their molecular shape, which in simple terms is a “Z” or “S” shape, doesn’t correspond to our own cells’ receptors. They can be broken down, but this requires the activation of what may be termed “toxin breakdown” mechanisms, which are designed to process very, very small, not large loads of unnatural material.
Simply put, trans fatty acids are not “real food” any more than saccharin or aspartame are. They increase obesity and may cause cancer. Guess who pays for the medical and disability costs? Society. So society, operating through its government, has the right to curb the use of trans fats. If you want to have free choice, fine. Like choosing to pay for those tastes you crave, then later for your own medical care and disability costs. You can’t foist the down-the-road costs of your poor dietary choices on other people who aren’t making those choices.
Sorry, I got this backwards, the product of 32 years of aging. The addition of hydrogen atoms, and creation of more single-bonds (alkanes) increases melting temp. The problem is that in industrial “desaturation” (hydrogenation) some of the natural cis alkene bonds are not desaturated, but are converted to lower-free-energy-level trans alkene bonds.
Can I grease my car with this stuff?
Angie and GMC70,
I suggest you carefully read http://www.bantransfat.org/abouttransfat.html and http://www.bantransfat.org/
There is a huge difference between “lard” and industry-processed partially-hydrogenated oil.
BTW GMC70… Oreos are NOW trans-fat free!
Good points above – especially a very good Chemistry overview by heartlander. I would add another point: the reason the industry likes trans-fats is that bugs won’t eat them – they don’t oxidize and go rancid. Maybe the bugs know something we don’t know!
GMC makes a good point about frying in lard – one reason for this is that it can take high temperature. I think a key to good frying – especially deep-fat – is DO IT HOT!
I was born and raised in the Deep South – home of deep-fat frying and using bacon grease as a seasoning.
I gave a TERRIBLE overview. Even in my second post I got it wrong. “Saturation” is adding hydrogen and creating more alkane bonds. “Desaturation” is creating more double alkene bonds, i.e. “polyunsaturated” means “many double bonds”.
So, to correct my own stupidity:
Body fat, including pork and beef lard is comprised primarily of highly saturated (fully or nearly fully hydrogneated) alkane fatty acids. They’re bound, three fatty acids to one glycerol molecule, which is called a triglyceride. This is a storage fat. It can be mobilized to generate energy in times of need, i.e. a food shortage.
Trans fats are manufactured when companies take poly-unsaturated oils and partially (incompletely) hydrogenate or “saturate” them (adding hydrogen and converting double-between-carbon-alkene bonds to single between-carbon alkane bonds), to convert liquid oils into semi-solid material. It isn’t that they WANT to create trans bonds, it is that when they destabilize cis bonds, and don’t achieve complete saturation (hydrogenation) in all of these bonds, trans bonds, which have a lower free energy, are made from the higher free energy cis bonds. In other words, the food industrialists unintentionally create a toxic byproduct. Can they get rid of it? Yes, but it will cost more money to do so. Will they eventually do this? I think they will.
I missed your error – my bad. Still a good basic overview.
Generality: polyunsaturated Good, unsaturated – fairly good, saturated- not so good.
Trans – BAD.
The way to not have trans fats is to not do hydrogenation in the first place.
I’d like to see more research on just which fats are best and then see the industry respond by selling a blended vegetable oil reflecting that. They have done that with a margarine that (I think) is not adulterated.
This sounds like something my ex-wife Venoma might need- is it available in a 5 gallon drum?
Heart:
You point out that trans-fats are bad, with the chemistry to back it up. I’m not a chemist, so I’ll take your word for it. I don’t doubt it. However, you then conclude:”They increase obesity and may cause cancer. Guess who pays for the medical and disability costs? Society. So society, operating through its government, has the right to curb the use of trans fats.”
Whoa, there.1) At the federal level, point to me the constitutional authority to do so; yes, I know, this reg is not federal. Give ‘em time.2) By that logic, nearly ANYTHING you or I do impacts others, in myriad ways. To argue that the state may regulate anything that is done which may impact others is to end any effective limits on the power of the state.
Freedom is in the little things, not always the big ones. It includes the right to make bad choices, but they are MY bad choices. And the price of that personal freedom is in the social impact some of those bad choices may have. At some point, true, bad choices have so much social impact that we do bar them (try robbing that bank, for example), but this isn’t anywhere near that. This is simply the nanny state run amok.
GMC70,
So you (and others) intentionally choose to consume an toxic product? Why, when healthier alternatives have equal, or even better taste?
Choice requires knowledge — you don’t even seem to know the difference between “lard” and trans fat oils, or what’s in Oreos.
Do you know how much trans fat you ingest? Are you aware That the U.S. Govt says to keep trans fatty acid consumption as LOW as possible, below 1 or 2 grams a day?
And please explain how 30,000 to 100,000 premature deaths/year in the U.S. from heart attacks is not “much social impact”? Not to mention the costs of those that survive heart attacks, or get Type 2 diabetes, or other health problems.
GMC – I have no desire to rpohibit you from eating adulterated food. I just think it should be appropriately labeled as such.
I agree with Ben. California passed a food-ingredient labeling law in the 1970’s. Food industrialists have tried to a less-informative federal law, which trumping state law, would preclude Californians from seeing what they are eating. That’s a scheme to trample people’s rights. If Kansans don’t care what’s in their food, fine, let them be ignorant. But if Californians want to know what’s in their food, who here says they have no right to this information?
‘Course, even in Kansas, who says that Kansans, who want to know what’s in their food, even if they are a minority, don’t have a right to the information?
The point that I wanted to make earlier, but failed to do so because of the effects of time and aging on my brain, is that we learned about Emil Fischer’s “lock and key” analogy, regarding biochemical substrates and enzymes. Natural food is a key, in analogy, and our enzymes are a lock. They fit together. Take a housekey and saw off a tooth. You won’t be able to open your front door. Trans fats are an unintended industrial byproduct of attempts to partially hydrogenate natural plant oils. They don’t fit our metabolic “locks”. The best analogy I can think of is consider the housekey again. Instead of a missing tooth, consider a lock that fits a key in which all teeth are “up”. Now create a key in which half the teeth are “up” and the rest “down”. It won’t even fit into the lock, much less turn it.
If nature created trans alkene-bond fatty acids in plants, and animals had the corresponding receptors, then the food industry’s synthetic efforts wouldn’t be a problem. Or if cis alkene bonds had a lower free energy level than trans bonds, the industrial synthesis wouldn’t be a problem, because it would not convert cis-bonds to trans-bonds.
My professor, Joseph Neilands, argued that it would be better, to make margarine, for the food industry to fully hydrogenate batches of corn oil with double bonds and eliminate the double bonds entirely in these batches, creating a semi-solid substance, and after reaction, mix this fully saturated (hydrogenated) compount with natural “unsaturated” oils to get a desired “softness”. Which was, and is, doable, from a chemical engineering perspective. And our enzymes could process these.
Course, if you eat to much of them, you can still get fat. ;)
Cosmos:
I never opposed information; but the proposed regulation goes much further than that. And you’ll have to back up those numbers, and tie them directly to transfats. It couldn’t be Americans eating like farmers and working in sedentary jobs, could it???
To the regulators at NYC: you are not my mommy, and I’ll make my own choices, thank you. Butt out.
cis-trans is an interesting thing. When I analyze pollution sites such as the downtown Gilbert/Mosley site I use that mix to help be understand what is going on. When trichloroethene biodegrades to dichloroethene it preferentially goes to cis-1,2-DCE. Industrially produced DCE is usually trans-1,2-DCE while sone 1,1-DCE is also made. (1,1-DCE is biologically produced from 1,1,1-trichloroetAne). These isomers are very useful in fingerprinting amd age-dating pollution plumes.
The key here is that nature likes cis; industry/laboratory yields trans.
GMC70,
“To the regulators at NYC: you are not my mommy, and I’ll make my own choices, thank you. Butt out.”
Please tell us HOW you make your “own choices” re trans fat at restaurants?
1) Trans fat is undetectable without scientific equipment.2) Restaurants (unlike packaged food) are not required to provide info.
If you want to avoid the toxic trans fat, your choices are trust what the waiter/owner says — or not eat there.
Consumers cannot make a “choice” if they don’t have the information.
See “responses to the criticisms”: ‘5. “Customers should have freedom of choice.”‘ at http://www.bantransfat.org/
Back up my numbers about deaths, etc? See reponse,: ‘1. “Trans fats are not harmful.”‘ same link.
I enjoyed all of the above comments and the extensive review of what is and what isn’t bad fat. The fact remains that if the trans fat now used in many foodstuffs was presented as a drug to the FDA it would be denied production. The evidence is irrefutable that it’s consumption starting at an early age is a big part of why America, and now much of the world, is getting more and more obese and seeing heart disease and diabetes in a younger and younger population.For those of you who think the government should butt out, that’s fine for adults, but should we really allow another generation to inadvertently ruin their childrens lives with this stuff?
Great soyfood menu:
http://www.soyfoods.com/recipes/
Getting the planet healthy is not a bad idea either. If more did most or all of their socializing by feet or bike that could have a tremendous effect on cutting the demand for oil as would using cars that 32/36 mpg such as Matrix,Corolla or Vibe. The high mileage hybrids is icing on the cake. Again walking and biking are the heavy impact.