Transfats

You know by now what a wacky healthnut I am. And it hardly even matters that I'm always right about everything. It's just a little freaky, the way I am, and that makes you uneasy. I understand that. Of course I do. I understand everything. But you'll have to put aside your narrow-mindedness once more, and sit at my feet for today's lesson. How else will you come to understand what is good and right? It's what I'm here for. You're so lucky to have me. I'm like a guru or something. I'm just unbelievable. People are always telling me that.

As even you will finally have heard, transfats are a problem. They're not-saturated fats that have been altered to act like saturated fats -- solidish at room temperature. Very stable, long-lasting, high-temperature for cooking, less or no need for refrigeration, inexpensive, kosher -- and so very convenient for manufacturers and retailers. Hmm. Doesn't it seem odd that food should be manufactured? What a strange idea.

What do they do in one's diet? Raise the likelihood of heart disease. Raise bad (LDL) and lower good (HDL) cholesterol. Of course there is no bad cholesterol -- it's the ratio that's important. Transfats are demonstrably worse than animal fats in terms of heart health (understanding that transfats occur in small amounts naturally in animal fats, but do not act in the same toxic way). Risk of CHD (coronary heart disease) doubles for every 2% increase in the diet, contrasted to 15% for saturated fats. That same incremental 2% rise of transfats at the cost of carb calories increases the risk of ovulatory infertility by 73 percent.

Other problems? Evidence suggests an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, liver dysfunction, and prostate cancer. There is no consensus regarding these risks, because of the obvious confounding factor of generally poor dietary choices. Donuts have a lot of transfats, but people who eat a lot of them aren't obese or diabetic because of the transfats. These benighted souls are not likely to be eating a sufficient number of daily servings of fruits and veggies, if you get my meaning.

On the other hand, over a span of six years in two groups of monkeys with the same caloric intake, the transfat group gained 7.2% of their body weight, while the mono-unsaturated fat gained only 1.8 percent. My theory would be that the transfat calories were less available metabolically, so the monkeys responded by lowering their body temperatures, and by getting less exercise.

The NAS reports that there is no safe amount of dietary transfats. There is an opposite of an RDA -- in other words, the recommended daily allowance is zero. There is no tolerable upper limit, because any increase raises the risk of heart disease, and most likely these other problems as well. That's all ugly enough. Uglier still is the fact that transfats show up in mother's milk -- up to 7% of the calories in, of all places, Canada. That's an average. Some poor babies are getting a mouthful.

Our systems cannot readily break down transfats, so they remain in the blood much longer -- plaquing the veins, the way insane people smear feces all over their cell walls. So that's a problem. And there's all that CHD and obesity and stuff. But a more subtle problem is this. A cell is like a water balloon, with the cell membrane holding it all together. Cell membranes are made up of fats, of lipids. Cells take lipids out of the blood to build and repair the membrane. Polyunsaturated fats are ideal, because they're nice and rubbery, flexible. This is important because the cell receptors, the doors that allow nutrients and information to pass through the membranes, have to stretch open and then resume their closed shape. But a transfat, a Frankenfat, looks pretty much like an unsaturated fat, so a cell will use it just as readily. The problem is, transfats are not rubbery. They're plasticky. They take the place but do not do the job of a good lipid.

So your cells don't function in a healthy, in a youthful way. They act like old plastic milk cartons that have been out in the sun for years. Brittle. Not supple and rubbery and sexy. So your cells starve, slowly. See? The ramifications are beyond the grasp of your poor intellect. How I pity you. There is a way to fix it, sort of, your plastic body. Get plenty of omega 3 in your diet. Flax, fish oil. Little by little, the transfats will be replaced.

The FDA is sort of protecting us, by requiring labeling. But half a gram of transfats per serving gets a rating of "transfat FREE". Half a gram doesn't sound like much. But that's about 5 calories. If a serving is a hundred calories, that's 5% of your calories. So it turns out to be very much indeed. What are we, Canadian babies?

I'm writing all this, though, not because I care about you. I only care about myself. Don't you know that yet? No wonder you keep hooking up with all these abusive and emotionally unavailable boyfriends of yours. The reason I'm writing this is that I heard some talk radio guy just now complaining about how government is interfering where it don't belong. NY City has banned transfats in restaurants. More lefties and Nanny Statists poking their long noses in where they don't belong. Same with smoking bans, he says. People who don't smoke can go to another restaurant, where the owner has chosen to keep out the smoking. See? The market place at work.

A few problems with such reasoning, like children in restaurants exposed to second hand smoke, because of ignorant, indifferent or otherwise stupid parents. We don't raise other people's kids, but we look out for them. As for transfats, as long as health care is paid for by the tax payers -- and it is, to a measurable degree, even for you (are you planning on opting out of Medicare?) -- then government has the obligation to promote some sort of preventive health care. Does the government have the right to regulate a legal activity? Sex in public. There are community standards, which can forbid lawful activities.

The talk show guy questioned how the bureaucrats could say what ingredients could go in food. Well, it regulates the level of rat feces you get in your hot dogs. He might object that rat feces is not an ingredient. I would agree that it's not in the recipe, but I'd also say he's quibbling about "ingredients", and tell him to pick a word he's happy with so we can move on. I'd say that regardless of how he'd characterize tranfats, he could not say it was actual food, like nutritious, you know? I'd ask him why he thinks we should be sold things that are not food, to eat. He would resort to his conservative position, that government should stay out of it. I'd reply by pointing to the Constitution, which requires that government "promote the general welfare". I'd suggest that part of promoting health is discouraging what manifestly has an inverse and parabolic relationship between economic benefit to the seller, and health benefit to the buyer. As long as recreational drugs are unlawful, or lead paint on your child's toys, this precept would be hard to refute.

As I've said, I used to be a registered Libertarian. In many ways I still think that way. But government, by its nature, limits freedom. That's why I prefer the word liberty -- which places freedom in the responsible context of society and its many obligations and demands upon us. The savage is free. Civilized men have liberty. And adults understand that however pleasing some theory may be, about human nature, the sad reality is that almost everyone is stupid and self-destructive, and it is only the coercive force behind just laws that allows us to sleep peaceably in our beds. Transfats may seem a far cry from the midnight marauder. But they'll stop your heart just as surely, for all that they'll take decades to do it.


J