UnNews:US moves against trans-fats
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We have met the enemy, and he is us | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Sunday, December 22, 2024, 07:29:59 (UTC) |
US moves against trans-fats |
7 November 2013
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Government regulators declared trans-fats unsafe, the first step in prohibiting them outright.
American agribusinesses were in an uproar, noting that the move would ruin their business by preventing them from labeling potato chips, pork rinds, and fritters as "free of trans-fats." In American cuisine, every package of food includes one free, hokey health claim: Lard is labeled sugar-free, while candy (especially when disguised as granola or rice cakes) is labeled fat-free. Foods that can make neither claim trot out trans-fats. Eliminating trans-fats would end this sales pitch, and consumers who actually read the ingredients usually decide not to eat at all.
The FDA's finding that trans-fats are "no longer considered safe" only applies to man-made trans-fats. Trans-fats occur naturally in meat and dairy, but the man-made additives make food taste good and keep it from spoiling, two considerations absent from the Obama Cuisine Master Plan. The President has said that businesses "would be free to do so. Y'all will just go bankrupt." This puts agribusiness on an even footing with the coal industry, handgun manufacturers, and the Tea Party movement.
Trans-fats are linked to a type of cholesterol that clogs the arteries. So is natural trans-fat, but no slip-and-fall lawyer will sue a farm animal, unless it has a rich uncle. Separately, water is linked to drowning, and life is linked to death. Industry representatives expressed hopes that an emerging scare about genetically modified food would take the place of trans-fats, as test marketing indicates that the claim, "Free of cat dander" does nothing to boost sales.
No one in the U.S. Senate had any comment on the emerging regulation, as the Senate was busy voting on job protection for car salesmen who wear lipstick.
Sources[edit]
- Anna Edney "Artificial Trans Fats Used in Food Deemed Unsafe by U.S. FDA". Bloomberg, November 7, 2013
- Donna Cassata "Senate nears historic vote on gay rights bill". Associated Press, November 7, 2013