Food - fact & fiction

I found what I though was an informative article on food & what is good/bad to eat from the POV of health, the environment & animal husbandry, etc

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/hea...icle361410.ece

then I read the bit about trans fats

These have been shown to increase the level of 'bad' cholesterol in the blood.

They occur in two main groups of food - dairy goods & partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

- where the article gets it wrong is where it states that the naturally occuring trans fats in dairy foods are less harmful than those found in partially hydrogenated fats. This is just untrue & very misleading.

- it also fails to mention that fully hydrogenated fats do not contain trans.

As the article states, it is derived from a book published today - it just makes me mad that it is cashing in on peoples concerns, without any process to ensure the information is correct.

- like the leaflets being distributed in the Czech Repulic about the 'danger' of citric acid

http://www.szpi.gov.cz/eng/news/arti...=2215&ts=3ec79

[Nugget]

The problem that we have (and I mean 'we' as in those who work in the food industry like what we do ) have is that it's incredibly easy for someone to 'cash in' on the fears of the general public. If you take the example of the Sudan 1 thing last year, there was this big media frenzy about the fact that Sudan 1 was a carcinogenic, but hardly anywhere mentioned the fact that you'd need to eat about a ton of the stuff every day for a year for it to have an impact.

Then you see the flip side where all of our suppliers (and I bet yours as well, wee man) are currently removing hydrogenated fat from their recipes. Unfortunately, this doesn't really mean anything to Joe Public, so they won't notice anyway

Originally Posted by Nugget

The problem that we have (and I mean 'we' as in those who work in the food industry like what we do ) have is that it's incredibly easy for someone to 'cash in' on the fears of the general public. If you take the example of the Sudan 1 thing last year, there was this big media frenzy about the fact that Sudan 1 was a carcinogenic, but hardly anywhere mentioned the fact that you'd need to eat about a ton of the stuff every day for a year for it to have an impact.

Then you see the flip side where all of our suppliers (and I bet yours as well, wee man) are currently removing hydrogenated fat from their recipes. Unfortunately, this doesn't really mean anything to Joe Public, so they won't notice anyway

True, you know I like to have my soap-box moments & I shouldn't get so annoyed at these things, but food seems to be one area where manufacturers can't win.

- the trouble is, in my view, that people don't want to really understand about the food they eat. We get loads of people phoning our consumer care number saying they are allergic to gluten & do our fishfingers contain any - well duh, they are coated in breadcrumbs & the label says breadcrumbs are made from wheatflour - which contains gluten...

- I'm not saying everyone should have a degree in food science, but if I was allergic to something, I would make sure I knew enough to ensure I didn't eat it.

The result is a 'flavour of the month' approach (sorry ), where the latest fad or problem gets the tabloid treatment, as with trans fats at the moment, and the implication, inevitably, is that manufacturers are deliberately out to con the public. Hydrogenated fats were originally seen as a good thing, even now I bet people would say the margarine is 'better for you' than butter, even though the fat percentage is the same.

Unfortunately the most likely substitute for hydrogenated fats is palm oil - already causing concern for its environmental impact on the forests in Sumatra & Borneo