It’s not a done deal yet, but if the regulation is adopted without being gutted by industry lobbies, it will mean fewer heart attack deaths and hopefully healthier consumers.
Emphasis added.
I should have included the closing paragraphs too:
IOW, always check the ingredient list for PHO’s (partially hydrogenated oils) even if the per serving info says 0 grams of trans fat since less than .5gm/serving can still add up if you eat a lot of food with PHO’s.
We’ll find out in a decade or two that trans fat is actually beneficial for rheumatoid arthritis and will be recommended as a part of a ‘balanced diet’. 
Yeah, that’s the sort of thing I’m worried about, too. But this system seems to be set up to allow for that sort of thing. At first pass, it seems to allows individual trans fats to be designated as safe in certain amounts. So, if we find we need some, they can be put back without much difficulty.
What I’m more worried about is food prices. Surely transfats are used for a reason, and that reason is likely that it is cheap. Perhaps it would be better to instead subsidize other saturated fats. It worked for high fructose corn syrup, anyways.
Does this mean french fries are going to suck now?
Here’s an idea: tell consumers the percentage of trans fat in the food, and then let them decide.
Trans fats produce foods with different, often superior, properties. They’re not necessarily cheaper.
Y’know, I’m generally a fan of, “label it and let Darwin sort it out,” but strictly speaking, hydrogenated vegetable oils aren’t even really food, are they? They’re not something you can make in a kitchen. They’re a laboratory experiment run amok. And I’m not all anti-food science, but when you’ve got a not-food item in food that’s killing thousands of people a year, maybe it just shouldn’t be there.
I mean, this is the same agency that doesn’t ban insect parts or arsenic, and actively encourages adding ammonia and carbon monoxide…because those things don’t actually *hurt *people (they just gross people out). They’re not interested in public opinion, they’re interested in maintaining the safety of the food supply.
*Fuck this fucking broken quoting system. I’ve been trying to start this with a multi-quote for fifteen minutes, including flushing and restarting Firefox and switching to IE, only to get a blank edit box every fucking time, even though I can quote in other threads. Fuck that’s annoying.
*[SIZE=2]Trans fats are all but unknown in natural foods and have no known health value. There is zero possibility that taking artificially-made ones out of our diet is going to have health consequences.
Whether or not a tub of hydrogenated vegetable oil is cheaper than a tub of butter or lard is not the issue - partially-hydrogenated fats are a backbone of the food industry for reasons that ALL trace to cost savings. It’s one of the most egregious cases of the food industry being happy to sell us something borderline toxic to save money and remain competitive. The other half of the equation is the effect saturated fats have on product perception - “mouth feel,” fat taste and “bliss points,” making the products highly desirable and thus sell better. Partially hydrogenated fats also give baked products longer shelf lives; == money again.
This is not a case of “let the consumer decide.” It’s an overdue case of telling the food industry we’re not going to be their guinea pigs, swill-eaters or money machines any more.
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One thing that few people seem to know and consumers as a whole are hammered by is the insane competitiveness of the food conglomerates. Whereas Ford is delighted to have 40% of the economy car market, Chevy is ecstatic to have one in every two pickups wear their bowtie and even Apple happy to have a majority of the MP3 player market, Kraft, FritoLay, General Mills and the others are absolutely crazy-furious that the others have even a foot of shelf space. It’s an all-out war and there are no limits on how they will optimize food products for sales over all other considerations. CocaColaCorp is famous for existing on a “war footing” in all divisions, trumping the others that throw together war rooms and battle plans whenever there’s a setback in sales.
Being bland and dismissive about food issues and thinking only stupid people buy bad foods and that it’s a consumer’s market is to have no idea - at all - how the food industry works and thinks. They are out to get every foot of shelf space in your local grocery, lock you into their products, and extract every dollar they can at any cost.
If you want fries that suck, go to Burger King for their new “Satifries” I actually used to like BK’s previous incarnation of fries, but now they lack thet crispy, fatty flavor.
Plus, the local BK pissed me off by continually offering me a senior discount when I went through the drive-thru. One pimply faced teenager even gave me the discount without asking, and could only stutter when I asked "Does this mean you think I look OLD?
No less an authority than Julia Child said McD’s fries sucked after they stopped using lard. Frankly, I’d rather have half a dozen lard-fried fries than a superscoop of the bland, pasty, engineered shit they serve now.
A funny for BK visitors: note that the fine print about SatisFries compares them to McDonald’s fries, not regular BK fries. 
Utterly false. Butter has trans fats, as do some other natural dairy and meat products. The FDA is trying to get rid of partially hydrogenated oils, which is the major source of non-natural trans fats.
For the record, most large food companies have been removing partially hydrogenated oils from as many products as possible for at least the last five years. Yes, I used to work for a company that makes vegetable spreads that are meant to replace butter.
It’s probably a good thing that fatty food doesn’t provide a huge endorphin rush. If things like fries and cookies aren’t so tasty, maybe people will eat less of them.
It’s too bad we get so much pleasure from food, especially bad food. More often we eat because it feels good rather than we need nutrition or fuel. So if fatty foods become a little less delicious or more expensive, it’s probably a good thing for our health.
Small amounts, yes. Virtually insignificant on a dietary scale. “All but unknown” may be poor phrasing but it’s anything but “utterly false.”
Unless you’re Paula Deen. 
Well from the sources that I looked at, butter contains about 3 g of trans fat per 100 g. Household vegetable shortening contains about 13 g of trans fat per 100 g. The shortening gets its trans fat from partially hydrogenated oil, while the butter is natural. I don’t think that the trans fat content in butter is insignificant, though.
For the record, I have butter in my house. I also would have no problems significantly reducing the use of partially hydrogenated oils.
Yes, but naturally occurring transfats appear not to be bad for you, so it doesn’t matter… Don’t blame me, blame science.
I don’t doubt that, which is probably why I have butter in my house. I mostly brought up the point that butter has trans fats to show how muddled all of the food information can get. The FDA is treating trans fat as the current bad thing to eliminate from your diet. Much of the increase in trans fats is probably due to the FDA making saturated fats the bad thing a couple of decades ago. The FDA has a habit of trying to get rid of some ingredient (sugar, salt, trans fat, etc), which often gets replaced by something just as bad or worse.
Now the FDA is going to try to get rid of trans fats to get rid of partially hydrogenated oil (or vice versa). Big food companies are probably going to replace partially hydrogenated oil with oil fractions that have the melting properties that they want, but contain no trans fats. Are these oil fractions going to be good or bad for you?
For those planning to go out with one big blast of trans fats, here’s your theme song.