By
Anthony Shelley
March 7, 2007
Krispy Kreme launches a whole-wheat doughnut.
British authorities threaten to take custody of an 8-year-old boy because he weighs 218 pounds.
The Girl Scouts commemorate their 90th anniversary by debuting cookies without trans fats or sugar.
Since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began requiring trans fat information to be put on food labels in 1993, the debate about trans fats has soared to the forefront in the battle against obesity.
According to the FDA, trans fats, also known as partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, increase the shelf life and flavor-stability of food.
But the American Heart Association warns that consuming trans fats also raises the risk of coronary heart disease.
Americans consume more than four pounds of trans fats each year.
"Trans fats really are an artificial additive to our foods," said Barbara Bruemmer, director of the Didactic Program in Dietetics. "It is something that we can eliminate from the diet."
Colleges, restaurants and communities all over the country are currently opting to switch from trans-fatty acid foods to healthier alternatives.
Chipotle Mexican Grill now serves naturally raised meats and refuses to cook with trans fats.
Yet Chipotle isn't alone. New York City's Board of Health recently voted to eliminate trans fats by 2008 and the Evergreen State College banned trans fats from its campus last month.
At the UW, most trans fats are banned.
Last year, Storm Hodge, a Housing and Food Services manager, and Anita Bowers, a Housing and Food Services assistant director, worked to purge trans fats from campus but the process is ongoing.
"We've been trans fat-free for a year," said Vennie Gore, associate director for Housing and Food Services.
Gore also said that UW food services don't fry food in oils that contain trans fats.
Though trans fats aren't entirely gone, Bowers believes a completely trans fat-free campus is attainable.
Trans fats still exist in processed foods such as doughnuts, cakes, cookies, crackers and other items that are available on campus, with the exception of the UW Medical Center.
Last year, USA Today listed the UW Medical Center (UWMC) as having 4.5 grams of trans fats for every six ounces of its cafeteria french fries.
Today, UWMC's food service department is almost entirely trans fat-free. UWMC is working to eliminate its remaining processed foods that contain trans fats by replacing them with healthier products.
Americans on average consume more saturated fats than trans fats. Some experts argue that saturated fats are much more dangerous because they raise the level of low density lipoprotein (LDL), or bad cholesterol.
But officials from the University of Maryland Medical Center claim trans fats are worse because they raise total cholesterol levels and also deplete high density lipoprotein (HDL), or good cholesterol, which helps protect against heart disease.
David Dugdale, a professor of medicine and director of the Hall Health Primary Care Center, questions the effectiveness of a ban on trans fats altogether, pointing out that consuming certain fats is essential for the body to function properly.
"Trans fats are unique in that there is no specific benefit that comes from eating them," Dugdale said. "Most fats have a normal function in the body. You have to eat some cholesterol."
Although the ASUW Student Senate has considered legislation regarding trans fats in the past, ASUW Senate Chair Hala Dillsi said there are no current plans to do so in the near future.
Reach reporter Anthony Shelley at news@thedaily.washington.edu.
2 Comments
#1 Mark
on March 7, 2007 at 8:12 a.m.(Location Unknown | Unverified Name)
David Dugdale, a professor of medicine and director of the Hall Health Primary Care Center, questions the effectiveness of a ban on trans fats altogether, pointing out that consuming certain fats is essential for the body to function properly.
“Trans fats are unique in that there is no specific benefit that comes from eating them,†Dugdale said. “Most fats have a normal function in the body. You have to eat some cholesterol.â€
So....David Dugdale questions "banning trans fats altogether" pointing out that "certain fats are essential" and then later states "“Trans fats are unique in that there is no specific benefit that comes from eating them,"
That makes sense.
#2 Doug McManaway
on March 8, 2007 at 2:07 a.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
In response to Anthony Shelley's article about UW's "battle" against trans fats, I would like to draw attention to Michael Pollan's "Unhappy Meals" piece in The New York Times Magazine, January 28, 2007 (URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/mag...). Pollan asserts that the way of perceiving food has gone from looking at foods as a whole and their relationships with each other in regards to our diets, to "reductive science" and "nutritionism," which tells us as a society to look "deep within the meat itself" for some target rather than just the relationship of meat to the rest of our diet.
Here is a passage that I find most enlightening:
"No single event marked the shift from eating food to eating nutrients, though in retrospect a little-noticed political dust-up in Washington in 1977 seems to have helped propel American food culture down this dimly lighted path. Responding to an alarming increase in chronic diseases linked to diet — including heart disease, cancer and diabetes — a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, headed by George McGovern, held hearings on the problem and prepared what by all rights should have been an uncontroversial document called 'Dietary Goals for the United States.' The committee learned that while rates of coronary heart disease had soared in America since World War II, other cultures that consumed traditional diets based largely on plants had strikingly low rates of chronic disease. Epidemiologists also had observed that in America during the war years, when meat and dairy products were strictly rationed, the rate of heart disease temporarily plummeted.
"Naïvely putting two and two together, the committee drafted a straightforward set of dietary guidelines calling on Americans to cut down on red meat and dairy products. Within weeks a firestorm, emanating from the red-meat and dairy industries, engulfed the committee, and Senator McGovern (who had a great many cattle ranchers among his South Dakota constituents) was forced to beat a retreat. The committee’s recommendations were hastily rewritten. Plain talk about food — the committee had advised Americans to actually 'reduce consumption of meat' — was replaced by artful compromise: 'Choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.'"
The American diet is obviously dominated by corporations who seek profit over health. Profits don't come from eating less of certain foods and eating less overall, but from eating more food overall. Nutrients are merely a marketing tool that extracts large amounts of money during any particular craze.
Really, this trans fat craze is symptomatic of not only the habit America has of breaking down food into different kinds of good and bad nutrients but also of the marketable nature of this tactic. Instead of eating less food, we play a zero-sum game of eating less of one food, more of another. Moreover, the foods are processed to contain these special nutrients that don't naturally occur. “The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet and the diet out of the context of lifestyle," quotes Pollan from NYU nutritionist Marion Nestle.
If UW is so intent on emphasizing a healthy diet for its students, perhaps it should diversify the foods offered and the raw food ingredients offered within those foods. Nitpicking nutrients out of a system designed for the purpose of feeding people en masse won't change the culture of food at the UW.
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