Why Trans Fats?
Recently, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) announced a high-profile lawsuit alleging that using trans fats in restaurants was illegal. The suit is just one more publicity stunt in CSPI's decade-long campaign against trans fats.
"Hypocritical" doesn't begin to describe CSPI's lawsuit. It turns out that CSPI itself shares a large part of the blame for Americans' consumption of trans fats.
Dr. Mary Enig, a nutritionist who edited both the Journal of the American College of Nutrition and Clinical Nutrition, believes much of the blame for trans fats in the American diet lies with CSPI:
It is impossible to measure the hazards and grief that [CSPI Director of Nutrition Bonnie] Liebman and [CSPI Executive Director Michael] Jacobson—the leaders of the major nutrition "activist" consumer organization— have inflicted on many millions of an unknowing public.
In the mid-1980s, Jacobson launched a campaign against saturated fats—then CSPI's "panic du jour." In turn, CSPI demanded that restaurants stop using beef tallow to cook French fries and other foods. By the early 1990s, most restaurants had acquiesced to Jacobson's demands.
At the time, partially hydrogenated oils were the only viable alternative to beef tallow and other oils high in saturated fat. Jacobson and CSPI, driven by their myopic dislike of saturated fats, dismissed a number of studies connecting partially hydrogenated oil—and the trans fats it contains—with increasing levels of cholesterol.
In 1988, Elaine Blume wrote in the Center's Nutrition Action Healthletter: "[H]ydrogenated oils aren't guilty as charged... All told, the charges against trans fat just don't stand up. And by extension, hydrogenated oils seem relatively innocent." Two years later, CSPI nutrition director Bonnie Liebman put it more succinctly: "The Bottom Line... Trans, shmans."
So, after years of pressuring restaurants to stop using beef tallow and other oils, and at the same time exonerating partially hydrogenated oils, CSPI bears much of the responsibility for restaurants using oils high in trans fats.