You Sure That's Trans Fat Free?
I made my way out to Coney Island this weekend, a hotbed of deep-fried, greasy fair food if there ever was one. How reassuring it was then, as I stood in line for a hot dog, to find out via a hand-scrawled note on a paper plate–cum-sign, that my cheese fries were "100 per cent 'trans fats' free."
Then again, they might not have been. According to ABC News, there's some wiggle room in the claim:
Federal regulations allow food labels to say there's zero grams of trans fat as long as there's less than half a gram per serving. And many packages contain more than what's considered one serving.
"The problem is that often people eat a lot more than one serving," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian of Harvard School of Public Health. "In fact, many people eat two to three servings at a time."
Or they eat two to three servings of trans-fat-free cheese fries at a time.
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2 Comments:
I fear a lot of people are taking "Trans fat free" to mean "fat free" or "reduced fat".
No, silly, they've just moved it all into other fats.
(I inadvertently ate a McDonald's meal while in Maryland a month ago - where there is no such ban - and can I just say how much more platable the fries are with trans fats?)
Dan Dickinson at 12:46PM on 08/20/07
It makes me ill to think how much the FDA lets food companies get away with on product labeling. ZERO trans fat should mean ABSOLUTELY ZERO trans fat. Would it have been too much to have the FDA have them put "trace" for the amount of trans fats if less than 1/2g per serving??
The food companies have got great lobbyists. Its sickening...LITERALLY
ArtoriusRex at 2:00PM on 08/20/07