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，致动脉阻塞的反式脂肪已从杂货通道和餐厅菜单上逐渐消失。如今美国食品药物管理局在为这项工作收尾。
食品药物管理局计划在11月7日宣布，它将要求食品行业逐步淘汰所有反式脂肪，因为反式脂肪对人们的健康构成威胁。局长玛格丽特•汉贝格说此举能每年防止2万例心脏病发作和7000例死亡。
汉贝格说，尽管在美国的饮食中反式脂肪含量在最近10年已大大降低，它们仍然是公共健康领域的重要问题。反式脂肪长期以来一直受到营养学家的诟病，纽约等地区政府已经明令禁用。
管理局尚未就何时彻底淘汰反式脂肪设定期限，但将用两个月的时间来征求意见，之后官方再决定期限多长。取决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。
“我们这么做并不想过分扰乱市场。”负责食品的副局长迈克尔•泰勒说。不过，他说食品“行业已经表明总体上这是可行的”。
为了逐步淘汰所有反式脂肪，管理局称其已做出一个初步决定，将反式脂肪移出其“一般公认安全”的类别中，该类别有数千种添加剂，生产商不需管理局审查就能 将这些添加剂用于食物中。一旦反式脂肪从这一类别中移除，任何想使用反式脂肪的人都必须向管理局申请使用许可，而管理局不太可能批准。
人们普遍认为，反式脂肪对人体心脏的危害最大，甚至超过同样能导致心脏病的饱和脂肪。加工食品和餐厅都使用反式脂肪，通常是为了改善食品的结构、保存期或风味。往植物油里添加氢以增加油的硬度时会产生反式脂肪，这就是它通常被称为部分氢化油的原因。
科学家称反式脂肪对健康毫无益处，它们会提高所谓的“不良”胆固醇水平，增加心脏病的风险——心脏病在美国是导致死亡的主要原因。
2006年食品药物管理局开始采用列出反式脂肪的新营养标签，促使许多公司逐步淘汰了反式脂肪，越来越多的地方法规也已禁用了它。
尽管很多产品已将它移除，加工食品中仍含有反式脂肪，这些食品包括一些微波炉爆米花、冰冻披萨、冷藏生面团、饼干和现成即用的霜糖。餐厅有时也用它来油炸食物。许多较大的连锁店已经逐步淘汰了它，但较小的餐厅仍可能从供应商那儿得到含有反式脂肪的食物。
在联邦和地方政府的共同努力下，消费者食用的反式脂肪量缓慢减少。据食品药物管理局称，2003年美国消费者的反式脂肪摄入量为每天4.6克，2012年减少至每天约1克。
管理局官员表示，他们为处理反式脂肪问题已做出约15年的努力：第一个目标是用标签标明反式脂肪；自从2009年贝拉克•奥巴马总统就职以来他们便一直搜集数据来证明实行逐步淘汰的合理性。
美国的保护消费者团体公共利益科学中心九年前首先向食品药物管理局请求禁用反式脂肪。该中心主任麦克尔•雅各布森说，此举是“食品药物管理局能采取的最重要的挽救生命行动之一。”
他说管理局应该在决定期限时尽力加快行动步伐。
雅各布森说：“半年或一年的时间都是绰绰有余的，尤其是在公司已有10年时间考虑对策的情况下。”