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Kirata -> RE: Freedom in the 50 States (6/16/2011 7:54:18 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: juliaoceania
the link said something about "transfats".... in California the government has said no transfats... they see this as the government making me less free, how come I feel MORE free that I can go and buy food without worrying it will poison me?
Hyperbole is your friend, eh?
Labeling is information. Laws against "poisons" that aren't are another matter.
Trans fats were developed during the backlash against saturated fat -- the artery-clogging animal fats found in butter, cream, and meats. Then food manufacturers realized that trans fats lasted longer than butter without going rancid. The result: Today trans fats are found in 40% of the products on your supermarket shelves.
"We used to use animal fats, and people said, 'saturated fats are bad,' so we switched to trans fats," says Ruth Kava, PhD, RD, director of nutrition at the New York City-based American Council on Science and Health. "This kind of gives us an unfortunate focus on ingredients rather than the whole diet when the problem isn't this fat or that fat, it's too many calories."
"Anything was good if it decreased saturated fat consumption in the 1950s through the 1980s," agrees Alice H. Lichtenstein, Dsc, professor of nutrition at Tufts University in Boston. "But then studies began to question trans fats," too. Finally, in the 1990s, the evidence became clear: When vegetable oil is turned into a solid, like butter, it acts like butter inside the body...
"Trans fats raise (bad) LDL cholesterol levels slightly less than do saturated fats," says Lichtenstein. "But saturated fats also raise levels of high density lipoprotein (HDL) or 'good' cholesterol, and trans fatty acids don't." Trans fats may actually lower HDL. Thus, some researchers say trans fats are worse. Lichtenstein, however, figures the two fats probably cause equal harm in our diets because we eat far more saturated fat than trans fats.
Reference: WebMD
K.
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