The Center for Science in The Public Interest engaged in a media campaign to pressure restaurants to switch from animal derived fats (like lard and beef tallow) to vegetable derived fats(like Crisco).
They used their influence to push a policy change that was more harmful to the public health than the status quo. Now, this same group has used their influence to push a policy change that directly reverses the one that they championed 30 years ago.
I understand that our view of things changes as we gain new information but the thing that irritates me about this is that there was no mea culpa involved, no admission that they got it wrong last time. They just went full speed ahead with no acknowledgement of their role in the current state of affairs.
While true, this phrasing may be a bit misleading. The concern at the time was that saturated fats were bad, and unsaturated fats were not as bad. But the unsaturated fats (think regular vegetable oil) is liquid at room temperature instead of a gel, and has different cooking characteristics.
But the process of hydrogenation turns that liquid (at room temp) oil into a form that is closer to the traditional animal fat oils (i.e., lard). It also happens that the hydrogenation produces as a byproduct a small amount of trans fat contamination (this was never the goal, to produce trans fats -- it is a hard to avoid side effect of hydrogenation). And at the time, the trans fats byproducts weren't thought to be as harmful as saturated fats, esp since they make up such a low percentage of the overall product. Of course, now science knows more, and corrections are being made.
Edit: Is my understanding above correct? I.e., is it the goal of hydrogenation to produce a more solid form of oil, and the trans fats are a byproduct? Or is it the trans fats that actually solidifies the oil?
Hydrogenated vegetables oils are the primary source of artificial trans fats in food. And McDonald's themselves readily admits they used to use trans fats in their fryers.
> For example, we switched to a cooking oil in our restaurants that reduced artificial trans fat in most of our fried menu items
> The fast-food giant already has demonstrated that it can eliminate trans fats when required. In Denmark, the company switched the oil it uses to make French fries to one that doesn't have any trans fat.
Really? Do you have any details?