The Food and Drug Administration is ordering food companies to eliminate trans fats from their products within three years, a move being hailed by the medical community but excoriated by free market advocates who believe this is the just the beginning of the government taking nutritional decision out of the hands of consumers.
Tuesday’s FDA decision targets partially hydrogenated oils, or PHOs, which are commonly called trans fats. Companies can petition the FDA for an exemption but will not be able to include trans fats without federal permission starting in 2018.
Cardiologists are hailing the decision, saying trans fats are linked to obesity, high cholesterol and heart disease. But defenders of the free market say this is a solution in search of a problem.
“Trans fats have been phased out of our diets over the past decade and we’ve reduced consumption as a result of the market demand, more than 80 percent over the last decade,” said Jeff Stier, director of the Risk Analysis Division at the National Center for Public Policy Research.
While Stier admits that market demand is due in large part of mandatory labels on foods containing trans fats, he says the doctors are getting this one wrong.
“The argument that these cardiologists are trying to make is that we have to remove every last vestige, every little bit of trans fat that’s left in the diet. There is no evidence to support that,” said Stier.
Even more maddening to Stier is that trans fats only came about because of previous demands by liberal interest groups.
“The reason we have trans fats in the diet and they were so widely in use 15 years ago is because groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the food police that was behind the the ban of trans fats, a generation ago was scaring us about saturated fates,” said Stier.
“They pressured us and threatened regulation to remove saturated fat from the diet whenever possible. The industry responded and introduced and increased the use of trans fats because of this concern over saturated fat,” he said.
Stier says the shift to eradicating trans fats follows a long time of contradictory demands from the left.
“I think this ought to be a lesson in humility for the activist groups, who have been telling us, ‘Eat eggs. Don’t eat eggs. Eat butter. Don’t eat butter. Eat margarine instead. Don’t eat margarine instead.’ We ought to be a little more careful about this advice and the consequences of it,” said Stier.
Don’t expect the order on trans fats to be the last dietary directive from the Obama administration. Stier says Obama has hired many of the same people former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg employed to crack down on trans fats, salt, big sodas and other targets in the Big Apple. Centers for Disease and Control Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, who gained notoriety during the Ebola scare, served as Bloomberg’s top adviser on health policy.
The Obama administration is already seeking to impose other dietary changes.
“The Obama administration scientific committee called for less consumption of meat and more plant-based diets, not only because they’re healthier but because they allege that eating meat causes global warming. Therefore we ought to change how we eat because of its impact on global warming,” said Stier, who says his organization is challenging the administration’s agenda every step of the way and is urging Congress to assert its rightful authority on these issues.
“It’ll be interesting to see whether the Obama administration stays with that left-wing point of view or the law is instituted as Congress called for and that nutritional advice given out by the USDA and the FDA are actually based on nutrition rather than things like global warming,” said Stier.
In the meantime, do trace amounts of trans fats damage out health? Stier is skeptical, given that many of them are found in occasionally-eaten foods like dessert toppings.
“Who’s worried about sprinkles? There are very low levels of consumption. It plays a very important role in baking cakes, especially in the icing. You shouldn’t eat lots of icing on cake anyway, but these very, very small levels serve an important role,” said Stier, who says the alternatives to trans fats are maddeningly ironic.
“If you take them out of the food supply, they’re going to have to be replaced by other things, like butter, like palm oil, which activists don’t like because of their claim that it’s affecting rain forests in Malaysia,” he said.
Ultimately, Stier believes politics trumped science in the FDA’s decision, and there will be negative consequences, including diminished shelf life.
“We’ll have more food waste because foods won’t be as stable. They’ll go rancid quicker with other oils. So I don’t think the FDA has done an appropriate job of weighing these benefits and making a clear case of what the benefits are (very small) versus lots of unintended consequences. That’s where they usually get into trouble, by ignoring the unintended consequences,” said Stier.
