What did you have for breakfast today: A bran muffin? A piece of toast with margarine? A granola bar? A modest bowl of Wheaties?
Maybe none of those seems like a dangerous meal to you.
But each of those foods was probably loaded with trans fats—those mostly man-made fatty acids we’ve recently learned to fear.
As obesity figures continue to rise in this country and the scientific community debates how to update dietary guidelines for Americans, trans fats are a hot topic—the latest culprits in the nation’s ongoing battle against coronary heart disease and diabetes.
The issue was given nationwide attention in July, when the Food and Drug Administration ruled that trans fatty acids contribute to those diseases and that food manufacturers had until Jan. 1, 2006, to list the amount of trans fats on each product’s nutrition label.
Does it sound like a straightforward decision? Well, it took a long time to get there.
It’s been 10 years since the dangers of trans fats were put forward to the FDA. Now that agency is allowing the industry another 2 1/2 years to respond to the ruling. As for how long it will take Americans to pay attention to the information, that’s hard to judge.
Do we even care? How many of us have taken the trouble to look at the nutrition facts label on a box of cereal or package of cookies to see if any trans fats are already listed? (See accompanying box for how to detect trans fats.)
For that matter, how many of us check the amount of saturated fats, whose dangers we’ve known about for years? Are we just as happy to have the government figure out what to do and take responsibility for what we eat? Or are we waiting for the food industry to provide us with healthful products? Just whose fault is the crisis in American eating habits? An examination of the trans-fat issue shows just how complex the answers can be.
In cases where a food product may be unsafe, the first formal action is usually taken by the FDA, which can issue a ruling.
Before the FDA trans-fat ruling, as always, many people had a chance to influence the agency’s thinking: lobbyists on all sides of the issue, the public (which is invited to comment on subjects before the FDA) and, of course, the relevant administration officials.
In this case, that meant the commissioner of the FDA, the secretary of Health and Human Services (of which the FDA is a part) and, playing an unexpected role, the administrator of the Office of Management and Budget’s information and regulatory affairs, which watches over the impact of federal regulations on the U.S. budget.
The FDA predicted that by providing more information about trans fats to consumers on nutrition labels, the costs of illness and disease for Americans could be cut by as much as $1.8 billion a year in medical fees, lost productivity and pain and suffering.
In October 1993, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) wrote to then FDA commissioner David Kessler about the results of a study it had conducted analyzing the amount of trans fats in foods (french fries, chicken nuggets) commonly eaten by Americans.
