Fudging the numbers
Where I come from, "zero" means nothing, zilch, nada. I'll bet that where you come from it means the same thing.
So where exactly do those people come from that make up the FDA?
It must be another planet, because they're allowing food manufactures to make claims of "0 grams of trans fat" when zero turns out to be a smidge more. A little less than half a gram per serving more, to be precise. That just goes to show the wisdom of what I've said for a long time: Don't trust anything the FDA has signed off on—and that evidently includes numbers.
You see this bogus claim of zero trans fats slapped on various food items, generally of the junk variety. Cookies, cakes, packaged muffins—you get the idea. Federal regulations allow the manufacturers to still make the claim, despite there being trans fats in their products.
And with a nation of burgeoning waistlines, the health problem starts with people who are eating more than one serving at a time—not realizing how much heart-stopping trans fat they're actually ingesting.
The FDA's sad excuse for allowing these ridiculous claims to be posted is that trans fats are "challenging" to measure at lower levels. Its idea of a work-around is to research whether or not it should add a blurb on packaging that suggests you keep your intake of trans fats low. That's despite the American Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences both having concluded over five years ago that the only safe amount of trans fat is "zero."
Fat chance of keeping your trans-fat intake low if you're relying on these labels to guide you. And that's what many folks are trying to do. How many times have I advised you to read food labels and avoid hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils? Unfortunately, your job is that much more difficult with numbers that mean nothing. This will be an uphill battle if there is no truth in advertising and if what you read isn't always what you get.
Consumers have enough to challenge them when it comes to making healthy food selections. For the FDA to knowingly allow food companies to exploit a loophole—when they have no business putting that garbage in the food supply to begin with—is beyond unconscionable.
Your best bet when it comes to shopping for healthy foods is to stick with those products that are as close to nature as possible: Undoctored, unadulterated, un-"enhanced." Shoot for those foods that have had no contact with human hands beyond being picked and packaged. Skip the glittery, crinkly-crackly packaging of so-called convenience foods.
Redefine convenience: What could be more convenient than an apple or a pear?
