Despite promised FDA ban, deadly PHOs still lurk in our food
How the FDA gets away with murder, in three easy steps:
- Throw a big publicity party and announce how it’s going to require food manufacturers to remove partially hydrogenated oils — or PHOs, the source of killer trans fats — from their products.
- Give Big Food three full years to do that.
- Accept a petition in the meantime from a grocery trade group that could open the door for these ingredients to continue to be used the same as before — maybe even more so!
There’s no doubt that PHOs are killers. Even the FDA admits that thousands of Americans die every year directly due to their consumption of these artery-clogging ingredients.
But with another full year before the agency’s supposed nationwide ban takes effect, your chances of eating PHO-laden foods and serving them to your family are just as high as ever.
By knowing what to look for, however, you can do what the FDA has promised to — without having to wait one more day!
We probably didn’t need any more proof that lives would be saved by getting rid of PHOs, but nevertheless we have it. And it’s a good one.
Ten years ago, New York City started banning the use of PHOs in restaurants and bakeries. The restriction applied to oils used in items such as bakery products and cooking. And all it took was three years for the health benefits to appear.
A new study out of Yale has found that compared to counties where restaurants still use PHOs, Big Apple residents had an over 6 percent drop in the rate of heart attacks and stroke. And that was just because of a restaurant ban!
Now imagine how many lives might be saved if these additives were eliminated from foods you buy in the supermarket!
All of which is why the FDA got so many pats on the back two years ago when it announced that it was enacting a rule that would get these killer ingredients out of our food supply once and for all. The agency proclaimed that its actions could “prevent thousands of heart attacks and deaths each year.”
And that might very well be the case — if and when that rule ever goes into effect.
As it stands now, there’s still well over a year to go before this pending prohibition on PHOs ever sees the light of day. And all the while, Big Food has been scrambling to find a work-around.
Two years ago, its trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, submitted a huge petition to the FDA that was basically a blueprint for the giant loophole it plans to construct — one that would allow food companies to continue to use PHOs in every food you could imagine.
But that’s just the latest and greatest loophole where trans fats are concerned.
The current one permitted by the FDA allows a food manufacturer to claim a product contains zero trans fat, as long as it has under a half a gram per serving. But those half-grams add up. And, as a researcher in the Yale study said, your heart attack risk can skyrocket with as little as 2 grams, which can amount to just four servings of one of those supposed “zero trans fat” products!
Of course, PHOs and the resulting trans fats they create are only added to foods for appearance and to extend their shelf life. So, there’s really no reason to shorten your shelf life by eating them any longer.
To find out if a product contains any, forget the Nutrition Facts panel and go directly to the ingredient label. And if you see any mention of “partially hydrogenated oil,” put it back on the shelf.
Look, we’ve been served up a big, fat lie for far too long where PHOs are concerned. It’s now time to take matters into our own hands and boot this deadly additive out of our lives once and for all — without waiting any longer to see if the FDA really intends to keep its promise to do so.
“Trans fat ban saved lives in New York, study shows” Maggie Fox, April 12, 2017, NBC News, nbcnews.com
