The FDA will force all manufacturers to remove trans fat by 2016 from all the food they produce. Even if this is not the first attempt to have people reduce the consumption of partially hydrogenated oil, as the agency has been discussing the regulation since 2013, it seems that quite soon all the food producers will have to ask for FDA approval if they want to add it to their products.
The danger that the consumption of trans fat is posing to our body is well known. It was associated with obesity and heart disease, but also with memory loss and increased LDL (bad cholesterol). We should not forget that cardiovascular disease is number one on the list of death causes in the United States.
The Food and Drug Administration have implemented regulation regarding the use of trans fat in 2006, when they asked all manufacturers to list the amount of hydrogenated oil they used in their products. This prompted many companies to use less trans fat or stop using it altogether.
This was the case of McDonald’s, which reported they stopped using trans fat for the fries they made and Chick-fil-A, which also stated they did not use it in any of their products. However, if a product contains 0.5 grams of trans-unsaturated fatty acids, it is still considered trans fat free by the FDA.
In 2007, a rule adopted in New York City prompted all the restaurants to give up using trans fat in their dishes. However, many of them had already stopped adding it before the regulation was implemented.
The FDA aims to remove trans fat from the American diet in general. A reason for this is that so many U.S. citizens are obese and millions of dollars are spent on healthcare for people who suffer from heart disease. The agency wants to show that American people’s health really matters to them.
Thus, manufacturers have three years at their disposal to get rid of the unhealthy fatty acids. It is not yet certain how much the rule will affect producers. Even if there are certain products that still contain it, the consumption of trans fat has decreased considerably (by as muc as 78 percent) within the last decade, after the labeling rules were implemented.
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