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| FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Heart-clogging trans fats were once a staple of the American
diet, plentiful in baked goods, microwave popcorn and fried foods. Now,
mindful of the health risks, the Food and Drug Administration is getting
rid of what's left of them for good.
Condemning
artificial trans fats as a threat to public health, the FDA announced
Thursday it will require the food industry to phase them out.
Manufacturers
already have eliminated many trans fats, responding to criticism from
the medical community and to local laws, Even so, the FDA said getting
rid of the rest - the average American still eats around a gram of trans
fat a day - could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each
year.
It won't happen right away. The agency
will collect comments for two months before determining a phase-out
timetable. Different foods may have different schedules, depending how
easy it is to find substitutes.
"We want to do
it in a way that doesn't unduly disrupt markets," said Michael Taylor,
FDA's deputy commissioner for foods. Still, he says, the food "industry
has demonstrated that it is, by and large, feasible to do."
Indeed,
so much already has changed that most people won't notice much
difference, if any, in food they get at groceries or restaurants.
Scientists
say there are no health benefits to trans fats. And they can raise
levels of "bad" cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease, the
leading cause of death in the United States. Trans fats are widely
considered the worst kind for your heart, even worse than saturated
fats, which also can contribute to heart disease.
Trans
fats are used both in processed food and in restaurants, often to
improve the texture, shelf life or flavor of foods. Though they have
been removed from many items, the fats are still found in some baked
goods such as pie crusts and biscuits and in ready-to-eat frostings that
use the more-solid fats to keep consistency.
They
also are sometimes used by restaurants for frying. Many larger chains
have phased them out, but smaller restaurants may still get food
containing trans fats from suppliers.
How can
the government get rid of them? The FDA said it has made a preliminary
determination that trans fats no longer fall in the agency's "generally
recognized as safe" category, which covers thousands of additives that
manufacturers can add to foods without FDA review. Once trans fats are
off the list, anyone who wants to use them would have to petition the
agency for a regulation allowing it, and that would likely not be
approved.
The fats are created when hydrogen
is added to vegetable oil to make it more solid, which is why they are
often called partially hydrogenated oils. The FDA is not targeting small
amounts of trans fats that occur naturally in some meat and dairy
products, because they would be too difficult to remove and aren't
considered a major public health threat on their own.
Many
companies have already phased out trans fats, prompted by new nutrition
labels introduced by FDA in 2006 that list trans fats and by an
increasing number of local laws, like one in New York City, that have
banned them. In 2011, Wal-Mart pledged to remove all artificial trans
fats from the foods the company sells by 2016. Recent school lunch
guidelines prevent them from being served in cafeterias.
In
a statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was his
city's 2008 ban that led to much of the change. "Our prohibition on
trans fats was one of many bold public health measures that faced fierce
initial criticism, only to gain widespread acceptance and support," he
said.
But support is far from universal. A
nationwide poll conducted by the Pew Research Center between Oct. 30 and
Nov. 6 said that of the 996 adults surveyed, 44 percent were in favor
of prohibiting restaurants from using trans fats while 52 percent
opposed the idea.
Still, Americans are eating
much less of the fat. According to the FDA, trans fat intake among
Americans declined from 4.6 grams per day in 2003 to around one gram in
2012.
A handful of other countries have banned
them, including Switzerland and Denmark. Other countries have enacted
strict labeling laws.
Dr. Leon Bruner, chief
scientist at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said in a statement
that his group estimates that food manufacturers have voluntarily
lowered the amount of trans fats in food products by 73 percent.
The
group, which represents the country's largest food companies, did not
speculate on a reasonable timeline or speak to how difficult a ban might
be for some manufacturers. Bruner said in a statement that "consumers
can be confident that their food is safe, and we look forward to working
with the FDA to better understand their concerns and how our industry
can better serve consumers."
Said FDA
Commissioner Margaret Hamburg: "While consumption of potentially harmful
artificial trans fat has declined over the last two decades in the
United States, current intake remains a significant public health
concern."
Agency officials say they have been
working on trans fat issues for around 15 years and have been collecting
data to justify a possible phase-out since just after President Barack
Obama came into office in 2009.
The advocacy
group Center for Science in the Public Interest first petitioned FDA to
ban trans fats nine years ago. The group's director, Michael Jacobson,
says the prohibition is "one of the most important lifesaving actions
the FDA could take."
"Six months or a year
should be more than enough time, especially considering that companies
have had a decade to figure out what to do," Jacobson said.
