We’ve been poisoned in the name of better health

The FDA commissioner says the evidence is incontrovertible. Trans fats increase your risk for heart disease.

So they will now be banned. But what nobody’s pointing out is the reason trans fats became so popular. They go back 100 years, but they really took off once researchers started telling us that saturated fats – the natural fats found in meat, butter, coconut, and palm oil – were bad.

Food scientists replaced them with trans fats, which were made from liquid vegetable oils. But to make a vegetable oil that was solid at room temperature, they created a stiffer molecule that stayed solid in the body, too.

And as early as 1978, researchers like Dr. Mary Enig were seeing evidence that what was killing people wasn’t the saturated fat, but the stuff being used in its place.

“I said to the professor, animal fats are not causing this,” said Enig.

But by then, trans fats were being used for everything – fries, cookies, and bread. Americans kept getting fatter.

Now, however, with trans fats being banned, it’s looking like Dr. Enig is vindicated, and the best thing for replacing them of course, is something like beef tallow, which is what they used to use a hundred years ago.

That’s right, back to saturated fats! We are all Woody Allen waking up 200 years in the future amidst scientists who can’t believe we ate a fat free diet.