When Chinese companies were caught putting melamine into dog food people were outraged. No matter what the protein tests may have said (that’s why melamine was added, it made the protein content look higher) it isn’t food. Seems pretty straightforward.
But most people eating the “Western diet” — heavy on processed foods and factory-farmed meat — consume many pounds of non-food every year. And it’s currently completely legal.
If you’ve ready any of Michael Pollan’s stuff — especially In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
The bottom line is we’ve replaced most of the healthy animal fats in our diet with hydrogenated vegetable oils, now known as “trans fats”. We’ve been told for decades that vegetable oil was better for us than animal fats. More and more research is showing that it’s not.
University of Illinois food scientist Fred Kummerow has decided it’s time to stop sitting on the sidelines and try to do something about it. He has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to ban the source of trans fat — partially hydrogenated fat — from the American diet.
Kummerow contends trans fat contributes to both major causes of heart disease — the gradual plaque buildup in the arteries that interferes with blood flow and sudden blood clots in coronary arteries that can cause sudden death due to blockage.
Related content“Trans fat calcifies both the arteries and veins and causes blood clots,” he says in his petition to the FDA.
Even worse:
A recent reformulation of hydrogenated fat which he believes began around 2004 raised the trans fat levels from 20 percent to nearly 40 percent, he said.
Which means that without changing our eating habits, anyone eating manufactured food has doubled their intake of trans fats in the last five years.
The FDA acknowledged receipt of Kummerow’s petition Aug. 7 and has 180 days to respond. To support his petition, Kummerow requests, send an e-mail to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg at: margaret.hamburg@FDA.HHS.gov.
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10 Comments
Um, why doesn't http://blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com work?
You're the second person telling me they're having a problem. It looks fine here, and I'm getting plenty of traffic. Can you tell me who your ISP is so I can figure out if someone is blocking me?
Drew,
I want to thank you for reminding me of my great grandma. We kids would go visit the farm every summer for months. I loved it. The only part I did not like was the animals when it was time for slaughtering. When we moved away to college and the city life I moved away from fresh milk, grass fed cattle, chickens, ducks, lamb and other animals and fresh eggs. I recently recovered from a major surgery that caused some of my intestine and spleen and gallbladder to be removed. I vowed to find real food again. Even though I had forgotten how to cook it. I found a farmer who is willing to part with milk if I milk the cow, fresh eggs, and grass fed meat and have not looked back. I was directed to your blog when I had some questions on how to cook better with butter, lard and real food. The recipes have not let me down yet. Got a bag of chicken thighs in fridge with that wonderful sounding yogurt mixture. I recently brought all I need to make cheese, yogurt and other items from my milk supply as I have had so much of it lately. I even make my butter. So rich and so good. I will order your book on friday when we get paid, and I will also order the new one when it comes out. I thank you for all these wonderful recipes and reminding me what I had missed the most! Can not wait to see what treats you cook up for the holidays! I would love a refresher on sweet potato and pumpkin pies!
Jonica, I envy you the fresh milk supply. I'm in the suburbs, just far enough from the nearest farms that it's not a reasonable weekly trip for me … at least not if I still want to have time for anything else on the weekends.
You might want to ask your source to explain about all the latest laws and police actions cracking down on raw milk suppliers. You can look at it as a good idea (ensuring food safety) run amok, or as industrial food suppliers trying to stamp out independent operations. Either way, you don't want to get caught up in a SWAT raid. (That's not an exaggeration.)
Drew,
I know about the laws. And I know about that case. The law is if you buy the cow then its yours. And well….I brought the cow. I know the details are a bit murky but I truely feel that my food shouldnt be subjected to chemicals and additivites, and some other stuff that I just can not say! Either way I tend to be really careful and I do make sure my little jersey is in great health. I just couldnt take it anymore with milk that did not taste like milk, cheese that tasted off, and yogurt that left an aftertaste. The same for meat. What gets me is that the FDA is now allowing the companies to apply radiation to our food supply to try to kill off bacteria and other stuff. If we just tried to grow some of our own and tried to support the local farmers we might not be in such a big mess as we are now. Then again that is just one persons thought. I can not change the world but I can change the way my family eats. Little by little I can see the changes for the better in my families diet and health. Maybe I am a little too extreme for most but that is just me. Just hung a bag of cream cheese curds and letting them drain for 24 hours. It is out of this world. My younger sister wont eat the store brought stuff anymore.
thanks for posting this! If you're interested, I know the chemistry behind trans fat and I can tell you why it's so bad for you. Let's just say that it's a great way to clog up those arteries.
Thanks for the offer. That article about the petition included a link to the text of the petition itself, which had a full explanation of the chemistry in way more detail than I was able to follow.
I prefer the simpler explanation that people evolved along with the animals they eat, and we developed the ability to digest what came from them. When we alter the chemical makeup of those foods, there's no reason to expect our bodies can handle them, and in this case … they can't.
Hm, my ISP is T-2 (link to English page), but I don't see why would they block you. But please investigate further, I want to get my regular dose of cooking like my Grandma!
Btw, the home page (www.cooklike…) works, it's just the blog!
I'm confused. How are you posting this comment if you can't get to the blog? What comes up when you try http://blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com?
I got to this page through Google cache link to your page – it shows a cached version of the blog which it keeps on its servers. The link to comments from this cached page opened this Blogger URL, so I now come directly to the Blogger comment page (which shows up normally). When I go to http://blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com, this error message shows up: "Firefox can't find the server at blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com." Yep, weird. I noticed this when I followed the link to your fake food article from my RSS feed. I think it worked fine last week.