An Urban's Rural View

If the Food and Drug Administration had proposed to ban trans fats 10 years ago, soybean oil futures would have tanked. That they only fell 1% when FDA dropped the hammer last week is a testament to the progress the oilseed and food-processing industries have already made.

As concerns about heart disease swelled, as lawsuits multiplied, as labeling requirements kicked in, trans fats came out of foods. U.S. consumption has declined 70% in the last decade. To the American Soybean Association, answering this progress with a ban was a case of no good deed goes unpunished.

“Given that the food and vegetable oil industries have already moved to greatly reduce trans fats in food products and in Americans’ diets,” ASA’s president said in a press release, “We do have questions about the need for FDA to take this proposed action.”

If FDA had just been looking for further progress, it could have stopped letting food companies slap “zero grams trans fats” labels on products containing up to 0.5 grams. By declaring instead that trans fats would no longer be “generally regarded as safe,” the agency indicated that it considers the only safe level to be zero.

The big question the agency left unanswered in opening its proposed ban for comment is when. How much transition time will FDA allow? ASA indicated it will have something to say about that. “Since it will take a few years to ramp up high oleic soybean production to provide an economical alternative to food processors, we believe any final FDA determination on the matter should reflect this timeframe.”

The sooner the required transition, the more chance of realizing ASA’s worst fear—that “food processors may be pressured to replace remaining partially hydrogenated oils with those high in saturated fat such as palm or coconut oils, which would not be a good outcome for consumers.”

That’s a real fear for a couple of reasons. Once the FDA makes final its determination that trans fats are unsafe, food companies will have a big public-relations incentive to dump them. And palm oil mimics one of the things cookie and snack makers like about trans-fat-laden partially hydrogenated vegetable oil: its ability to solidify. That solidity is, for example, what makes the frosting stick to a donut.

Palm oil, however, has its own detractors. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which pushed FDA and food companies hard on trans fats, also opposes palm oil. “Biomedical research indicates that palm oil, which is high in saturated fat and low in polyunsaturated fat, promotes heart disease,” the center said in a 2005 report. “Though less harmful than partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, it is far more conducive to heart disease than such heart-protective liquid oils as olive, soy, and canola.” Environmental groups lament the damage palm oil plantations have done to the rain forest in Malaysia and Indonesia.

So switching to palm oil won’t be risk free. And soybean growers have another reason not to lose too much sleep over the ban: Thanks in part to all the progress that’s been made, partially hydrogenated oil represents a relatively minor usage of the crop. The lion’s share of the oil produced from soybeans is liquid, which even the Center for Science in the Public Interest calls heart healthy.

Urban Lehner
402 301 6143
urbanity@hotmail.com

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