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The Post-Standard of Syracuse on trans fats in food and health regulations

April 21

Score one for the “nanny state.”

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that New York City’s ban on trans fats in restaurant food led to fewer heart attacks and strokes, compared to places where there was no ban. The apparent success of this public health measure lends support to the federal government’s 2015 ban on trans fats in processed foods, which takes full effect next year.

Trans fats are contained in oils that are “partially hydrogenated” — an industrial process that won a Nobel Prize for its inventors in 1912. Such fats are cheaper and more shelf-stable, which led to their widespread adoption in the restaurant and processed food industry.

At first, trans fats like margarine were promoted as “heart healthy.” But multiple scientific studies in the 1980s showed just the opposite. Trans fats contributed to a 50 percent higher risk of hospitalizations and deaths attributed to coronary artery disease, according to a study of more than 100,000 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study. Trans fats also were found to raise “bad” cholesterol and depress “good” cholesterol — known risk factors for heart disease.

Faced with this alarming evidence, in 2006 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration started requiring food manufacturers to list trans fats on nutrition labels. FDA estimated trans fat consumption fell 78 percent between 2003 and 2012, thanks to labeling and consumer education. McDonald’s dropped trans fats from its fryers and baked goods in 2008. Many other fast-food chains followed.

In 2015, FDA declared trans fats “unsafe” in foods and gave the food industry three years to reformulate their products. According to the Mayo Clinic, “It’s predicted that eliminating trans fat in manufactured foods could prevent up to 20,000 cases of coronary heart disease and up to 7,000 deaths annually in the U.S.”

Consumers have barely noticed.

Gripe all you want about the “nanny state,” but sometimes it works to improve the public’s health. Without it, we wouldn’t have seatbelts and airbags in cars, fluoride in public water supplies and huge declines in tobacco use.

Next on the public health agenda: the twin epidemics of obesity and diabetes. We know one of the main culprits: sugary soft drinks. We took on Big Tobacco. Do we have the will to take on Big Soda?

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