> “I don’t know how many lives will be saved, but probably in the thousands per year when all the companies are in compliance,”
I doubt it. People are going to continue to eat way to much of things they shouldn't, or too much of things that should be only eaten in moderation. It's not like Trans-Fats are the only thing people are eating too much of that is killing them.
Very few things in food are categorically bad for you. Even stuff like fat & sodium, which people generally think of as "not good for you" are required for your body. If you tried to make a list of foods that actively harm you or that cannot be made a part of a healthy diet then your list would be very small.
Transfats are one of the few things that the above does not apply to. They are actively bad for you and there are no known redeeming qualities.
It is quite disturbing how big the anti-fat (in food) sentiment got in the 1980s and 1990s. And even though it has been heavily debunked, people still look at fat quantity in food to decide what is "healthy." Ignoring the fact that fat (not transfats, regular dietary fat) is extremely good for you, and won't cause you to gain weight.
There are even still "low fat" foods on the shelf which intentionally remove dietary fat and replace it with complex carbohydrates (mostly sugars), which are bad for you.
Remember the whole "red meat will kill you!" thing? Yeah, utter nonsense. There's a small amount of cancer risk from the cooking process (and glazing/smoking) but broadly speaking raw meats are one of the healthiest non-vegetables you can eat. Much healthier than processed foods. The more fat the better.
When you order a burger, the bun is by far the most unhealthy part. Then the sugared sauce (e.g. ketchup, mayo, etc), then the american "cheese," and last of all the meat. But most modern burgers are just "sugar delivery devices" in the sense that the % of meat is tiny and % of sugar (from bun, cheese, and sauce) is getting higher and higher.
I feel like there's often an odd tendency for people to arrive at the ultimate logical conclusion when it comes to health. If too much saturated fat is bad for you, avoid all saturated fat. If high sodium diets are bad for you, minimize sodium as much as possible (as opposed to just consuming a moderate amount). Nonfat diets, no-carb diets, all to chase the ever-changing concept of perfect health.
This kinda gets back to the 'eight glasses of water a day' thing. Some study indicated that a human should consume eight cups [the measurement, 2.5 liters] of water a day (including the water in food). Years pass, news reports are released, and you end up with people trying to guzzle down eight pint glasses of water a day.
I'm not sure I follow? I am trying to say (maybe unclearly) that vegetables are healthiest and then [unprocessed] meats. So meats are the healthiest non-vegetable.
Vegetables, raw meats, everything else.
Fruits are a tough category as some are extremely healthy (e.g. Blueberries) while others are barely better than candy (e.g. Figs, Grapes, etc).
To clarify here: You mean eating, for instance, bacon that is less processed (not injected with tenderizers, salt, msg, etc) is 'healthier' for you than bacon that is processed (all that stuff injected). You do NOT mean that eating less heated and cooked meat is 'healthier' than eating cooked meats. That the cooking process is independent (mostly) from the 'healthiness' of the meat.
Yeah. I feel like the above post is gibberish now. :)
I should have said "unprocessed meat" not "raw meat" since raw is often used to described uncooked meat.
Bacon gets a bad wrap because it is often cooked in unhealthy oils and smoked. Both of which are "bad." You stick un-smoked bacon on a george forman grill and you have a darn healthy piece of meat.
> because it is often cooked in unhealthy oils and smoked.
No, it gets a bad rap because its usually cured with nitrates/nitrites (including must "nitrate free" bacon, which isn't, it just uses celery salt, which contains nitrates that do exactly what other nitrates/nitrites do, but because its considered a flavoring agent and not a preservative and isn't synthized nitrate/nitrite, doesn't have to be labeled as a nitrate/nitrite), which have some adverse health effects in certain circumstances (though the USDA has taken action to require steps to mitigate those effects the same way that, e.g., the naturally occurring sources of nitrates in green vegetables naturally do, though the bad rap was already established by then), and also because of the high quantity of animal fat, which itself has a bad rap.
Uncured bacon obviously exists and doesn't have nitrates/nitrites (even stealth ones), but it probably isn't meaningfully more healthy than cured bacon.
Cooking bacon in oil is silly; its often used as a source of fat instead of oil in cooking.
If people start eating 100 percent less trans fat but 300% more sugar to compensate, then even though sugar has redeeming qualities, it will be a bad thing, right?
The argument that we could end artificial trans fat with tons of sugar is a straw man. The most sensible replacement which in most cases only affects the cost and shelf-life of food is either healthy or less-damaging fats.
Banning trans fat may be bad for orangutans but it's good for consumers' health.
What possible corporation out there would intentionally increase direct and indirect financial costs, lowering profits, merely to not increase sugar/hfcs use to lure people into buying their product?
Highly processed foods are now going to be much less greasy/oily and much more sugary to attract consumers. You need to do "something" get people to eat junk food, and if its not going to be the oily/greasy axis of evil it will be the HFCS/sugar axis of evil.
Maybe 1% of the market, the green/organic or at least greenwashing segment, will increase prices and switch to saturated fats and dramatically lower shelf life, but on a population wide scale that is a rounding error.
Higher carbs means more fat people and more diabetes and fat related illness including heart issues. So we're trading large number of heart disease related deaths for rather optimistically a slightly smaller number of obesity related deaths. Its probably a net win, but this is not the technological singularity where we'll all live forever...
Highly processed foods already switched over to using better packaging that keeps oxygen and moisture out (trans fats don't particularly taste better than other oils, they have better shelf life, improved packaging makes up for much of the difference).
Way to focus on that and not the much more real problem with people's diets, eating way too much. Yes, you need sodium in your diet to live, you do not need 3400 mg of it a day (twice recommended level).
Can you show that Trans-Fats would be killing people if they stuck to properly portioned meals?
Removing Trans-Fats is just going to be replaced with other fats, and probably some sugar for 'taste' that people will continue to eat far too much of. I expect the effect of removing Trans-Fats to be negligible to none because of that.
Although trans fats are edible, consumption of trans fats has shown to increase the risk of coronary heart diseasein part by raising levels of the lipoprotein LDL (so-called "bad cholesterol"), lowering levels of the lipoprotein HDL ("good cholesterol"), increasing triglycerides in the bloodstream and promoting systemic inflammation.
I doubt it. People are going to continue to eat way to much of things they shouldn't, or too much of things that should be only eaten in moderation. It's not like Trans-Fats are the only thing people are eating too much of that is killing them.