Health Canada's ban on trans fats suspiciously long in coming

[Guest guest]

The cookie crumbles

 

The food industry took control of the airwaves to push heart-stopping

snacks on kids.

 

Health Canada's ban on trans fats suspiciously long in coming

BY Wayne Roberts

NOW | DEC 2 - 9, 2004 | VOL. 24 NO. 14

http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2004-12-02/news_story3.php

 

Health Canada's announcement this week that it wants quick action to

reduce the use of trans fats to a bare minimum recognizes that the stuff

is an industrial commodity - not a food product at all - and needs to be

regulated on the same basis as any other industrial process.

 

No surprise, really, that humans who react positively to the natural

trans fats in dairy products have trouble assimilating the manufactured

trans fats that are unlike anything our species has digested over the

last few million years.

 

It's the beginning of the end of the era of manufactured consent among

food regulators. And it's been suspiciously long in coming.

 

Respected medical journal the Lancet documented the harm done to heart

health by this ingredient in 1956. The case against trans fats, which

seem to cause double trouble for crud buildup in arteries by reducing

" good " cholesterol while increasing " bad " cholesterol, achieved

political confirmation when Holland became the first country to require

massive reductions of trans fats in margarine in a 1995 law.

 

Almost a decade later, two years after becoming the first country to

require labelling of trans fats in food (companies were given three

years to comply), Canada became the second country to require a

phase-out. What's the skinny on these major time lags?

 

Trans fats are often referred to as " hidden " or " stealth " fats because

unlike the situation where people knowingly pick a high-fat cheese or

cut of meat, trans fats are often ingested by those trying to reduce

their animal-based and saturated fats in the hope of keeping their

arteries clear.

 

That's how trans fats snuck up from behind in the decade from 1992 to

2002, when red meat sales in Canada declined by 4 per cent only to be

outflanked by a whopping 25 per cent hike in overall fat intake thanks

to the camouflage provided by such vegetarian choices as salad oils,

cookies, kids' cereals, granola bars, doughnuts and french fries.

 

Just as hidden is the fact that trans fats are a product – literally –

of the industrialization of food. Trans fats were there at the birth of

a new species of manufactured food in 1911 when the much-anticipated

release of Procter and Gamble's new shortening, Crisco, made headlines

across North America.

 

These were the ragtime days when steel made tall buildings that scraped

the sky, Henry Ford perfected mass production of the automobile, the

Titanic was a showpiece of new technology, planes started flying and all

previous limits on food's artisanship, region and season were becoming

as relative as Einstein's time and space.

 

Makers of Procter and Gamble's soap lines had access to carbon-rich oils

and manufacturing technologies to convert them into multiple products.

The company also enjoyed access through advertising to housewives, who

wanted flaky pie crusts in the days when nothing said loving like

something from the oven made with trans fats.

 

More recently, as home baking became a forgotten art, manufactured trans

fats, as opposed to the naturally occurring ones in meat and dairy

products, were gobbled up by fast food bakers and restaurants.

 

Trans fats are the cross-dressers of the fat world, coming from plants

but mimicking those of animals. When the space in unsaturated carbon

chains is filled with hydrogen atoms bubbling in a vat of oil (thus

hydrogenated oils), the oil takes on qualities of saturated fat such as

solidity and stability.

 

The chief virtues of hydrogenated oils – long shelf life for baked goods

and consistency during deep-fat frying – are tipoffs that they come from

industry rather than nature. Industrial foods are not on the menu of

ancient bacteria, which lack the human intelligence to recognize them as

foods, so they don't spoil as fast. Nor are fabricated foods as likely

to go stale, melt too fast or otherwise show signs of normalcy.

 

The fed's phase-out directive, which sets up a task force of food biz

reps, health associations and academics, overcomes the big fat lie

promoted in the course of public health deregulation over the past 30

years, when health regulators slept while the fast food industry took

control of the continent's taste buds.

 

That big whopper of a mistruth involved the mantra about lifestyle, a

sound idea spun wrong. It's axiomatic to say that healthy eating and

exercise promote health. The spin comes from saying these are personal

choices and therefore can't and shouldn't be subject to legislation.

Reversing feminists who argued that the personal is political, the

dominant public healthists argued that the political is personal.

 

The fast food industry took control of the airwaves, particularly

children's television, of prime real estate in most cities and of

prestigious charitable sponsorships, but public health advocates weren't

supposed to do anything to guide lifestyles through government policies.

 

While the long-term significance of the new attempt at regulation for

heart health may be controversial – a case can be made that actions to

correct under-nourishment among poor children would be more beneficial

for more people – there's little doubt that industrial foods are at last

being regulated for what they are and aren't. the end