Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade. Now, the Food and Drug Administration is finishing the job.
The FDA planned to announce Thursday it will require the food industry to gradually phase out all trans fats, saying they are a threat to people’s health. Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the move could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each year.
Hamburg said that while the amount of trans fats in the country’s diet has declined dramatically in the last decade, they “remain an area of significant public health concern。” The trans fats have long been criticized by nutritionists, and New York and other local governments have banned them.
The agency isn’t yet setting a timeline for the phase-out, but it will collect comments for two months before officials determine how long it will take. Different foods may have different timelines, depending how easy it is to find a substitute.
“We want to do it in a way that doesn’t unduly disrupt markets,” says Michael Taylor, FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods. Still, he says, the food “industry has demonstrated that it is by and large feasible to do.”
To phase them out, the FDA said it had made a preliminary determination that trans fats no longer fall in the agency’s “generally recognized as safe” category, which is reserved for thousands of additives that manufacturers can add to foods without FDA review. Once trans fats are off the list, anyone who wants to use them would have to petition the agency for a regulation allowing it, and that would be unlikely to be approved.
Trans fats are widely considered the worst kind for your heart, even worse than saturated fats, which can also contribute to heart disease. Trans fats are used both in processed food and in restaurants, often to improve the texture, shelf life or flavor of foods. They are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it more solid, which is why they are often called partially hydrogenated oils.
Scientists say there are no health benefits to trans fats and say they can raise levels of so-called “bad” cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease — the leading cause of death in the United States.
Many companies have already phased out trans fats, prompted by new nutrition labels introduced by FDA in 2006 that list trans fats and an by an increasing number of local laws that have banned them.
Though they have been removed from many items, the fats are still found in processed foods, including in some microwave popcorns and frozen pizzas, refrigerated doughs, cookies and ready-to-use frostings. They are also sometimes used by restaurants that use the fats for frying. Many larger chains have phased them out, but smaller restaurants may still get food containing trans fats from suppliers.
As a result of the local and federal efforts, consumers have slowly eaten fewer of the fats. According to the FDA, trans fat intake among American consumers declined from 4.6 grams per day in 2003 to around one gram per day in 2012.
FDA officials say they have been working on trans fat issues for around 15 years — the first goal was to label them — and have been collecting data to justify a possible phase-out since just after President Barack Obama came into office in 2009.
The advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest first petitioned FDA to ban trans fats nine years ago. The group’s director, Michael Jacobson, says the move is “one of the most important lifesaving actions the FDA could take.”
He says the agency should try to move quickly as it determines a timeline.
“Six months or a year should be more than enough time, especially considering that companies have had a decade to figure out what to do,” Jacobson said.
在最近十年里，致動脈阻塞的反式脂肪已從雜貨通道和餐廳菜單上逐漸消失。如今美國食品藥物管理局在為這項工作收尾。
食品藥物管理局計劃在11月7日宣布，它將要求食品行業(yè)逐步淘汰所有反式脂肪，因為反式脂肪對人們的健康構(gòu)成威脅。局長瑪格麗特•漢貝格說此舉能每年防止2萬例心臟病發(fā)作和7000例死亡。
漢貝格說，盡管在美國的飲食中反式脂肪含量在最近10年已大大降低，它們?nèi)匀皇枪步】殿I(lǐng)域的重要問題。反式脂肪長期以來一直受到營養(yǎng)學(xué)家的詬病，紐約等地區(qū)政府已經(jīng)明令禁用。
管理局尚未就何時徹底淘汰反式脂肪設(shè)定期限，但將用兩個月的時間來征求意見，之后官方再決定期限多長。取決于找到特定食品中凡是脂肪替代品的速度，不同食品可能的期限也不同。
“我們這么做并不想過分擾亂市場。”負責(zé)食品的副局長邁克爾•泰勒說。不過，他說食品“行業(yè)已經(jīng)表明總體上這是可行的”。
為了逐步淘汰所有反式脂肪，管理局稱其已做出一個初步?jīng)Q定，將反式脂肪移出其“一般公認安全”的類別中，該類別有數(shù)千種添加劑，生產(chǎn)商不需管理局審查就能將這些添加劑用于食物中。一旦反式脂肪從這一類別中移除，任何想使用反式脂肪的人都必須向管理局申請使用許可，而管理局不太可能批準。
人們普遍認為，反式脂肪對人體心臟的危害最大，甚至超過同樣能導(dǎo)致心臟病的飽和脂肪。加工食品和餐廳都使用反式脂肪，通常是為了改善食品的結(jié)構(gòu)、保存期或風(fēng)味。往植物油里添加氫以增加油的硬度時會產(chǎn)生反式脂肪，這就是它通常被稱為部分氫化油的原因。
科學(xué)家稱反式脂肪對健康毫無益處，它們會提高所謂的“不良”膽固醇水平，增加心臟病的風(fēng)險——心臟病在美國是導(dǎo)致死亡的主要原因。
2006年食品藥物管理局開始采用列出反式脂肪的新營養(yǎng)標簽，促使許多公司逐步淘汰了反式脂肪，越來越多的地方法規(guī)也已禁用了它。
盡管很多產(chǎn)品已將它移除，加工食品中仍含有反式脂肪，這些食品包括一些微波爐爆米花、冰凍披薩、冷藏生面團、餅干和現(xiàn)成即用的霜糖。餐廳有時也用它來油炸食物。許多較大的連鎖店已經(jīng)逐步淘汰了它，但較小的餐廳仍可能從供應(yīng)商那兒得到含有反式脂肪的食物。
在聯(lián)邦和地方政府的共同努力下，消費者食用的反式脂肪量緩慢減少。據(jù)食品藥物管理局稱，2003年美國消費者的反式脂肪攝入量為每天4.6克，2012年減少至每天約1克。
管理局官員表示，他們?yōu)樘幚矸词街締栴}已做出約15年的努力：第一個目標是用標簽標明反式脂肪;自從2009年貝拉克•奧巴馬總統(tǒng)就職以來他們便一直搜集數(shù)據(jù)來證明實行逐步淘汰的合理性。
美國的保護消費者團體公共利益科學(xué)中心九年前首先向食品藥物管理局請求禁用反式脂肪。該中心主任麥克爾•雅各布森說，此舉是“食品藥物管理局能采取的最重要的挽救生命行動之一。”
他說管理局應(yīng)該在決定期限時盡力加快行動步伐。
雅各布森說：“半年或一年的時間都是綽綽有余的，尤其是在公司已有10年時間考慮對策的情況下。”
