NOTE: Interesting comments from nlpwessex - www.nlpwessex.org - prompted by the recent claims that GM crops will be the only sustainable way of solving our dietary shortcomings. Keep scrolling down for all their comments, quotes and links.
EXTRACT: It's one thing to try and get trans-fats out of margarine once you've discovered your nutritional advice to consumers was flawed. But try removing retrospectively unwanted material once it has been embedded at the molecular level throughout the food chain and into its most basic resource - crop seeds.
The combination of hubristic scientists armed with the 'nuclear option' of nutritional warfare (genetic engineering), together with the short-term commercial greed of the agribusiness sector, may prove to be the ultimate recipe for food-chain breakdown from which there is no recovery.
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GM's Trojan horse threatens humanity's food supply
'After the Second World War the process for making hydrogenated and hardened fats from cheaper sources of vegetable oils was widely adopted. Margarines were developed and marketed as alternatives to butter, and vegetable shortenings increasingly replaced the animal fats in cooking.....It is now generally accepted that trans-fats are actually worse for the health than the saturated animal fats they were designed to replace.'
Trans-fats - Prof Tony Blake
BBC Online, July 2007
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/food_matters/transfats.shtml
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Remember the days when you were told margarine was good for you? Then it was discovered ('oops'), that trans-fats (common in margarines) were actually bad for you. For some the result was premature death.
Nutritional advice from scientists comes with it own risk of being based on partial knowledge. Until now, however, at least those risks have been contained to a great degree by the properties of most basic foods remaining largely unchanged over time.
It's still quite easy for everyone to chose own their own dietary regime without the nutritional goal posts moving too drastically, especially in the case of unprocessed foods.
But all that could be about to change if genetic engineers have their way.
Struggling to win public acceptance for GM foods genetic engineers are scratching around with their 'solutions in search of a problem' in order to try and break the impasse.
Omega-3 acids are the latest ruse (see below).
The proposal to genetically engineer omega-3 acids into foods represents only the latest example in the thin end of the sharpest of wedges. Whether or not this particular proposal turns out to be 'a good thing' if permitted, its adoption would be likely to open the sluice gates to the wholesale reconfiguration of the world food supply at the most basic molecular level.
We can then expect 'boffins' to begin turning upside down the nutritional profiles of basic food stuffs based on 'best current advice'.
But on margarine they got the best scientific advice embarrassingly wrong. Far from preventing heart attacks, consuming margarine actually increased the risk of them. It took decades before this reality finally came to the surface. Meanwhile a global multi-billion dollar processed foods industry had been built on the back of this 'scientific' understanding.
Because it is such a powerful tool, it is inevitable that the genetic engineering of food for nutritional purposes will raise the stakes in this area immeasurably. The scope for rapidly and radically changing the nutritional profile of our foods is almost infinite. The properties of the apple you eat one year will be different to the properties of the apple you ate the previous year, and so on and so on, endlessly into the future.
At some point, if we pursue this route, our staple foods will have had so much 'plastic surgery' that returning to the original foods (with which, unlike the GE versions, we have co-evolved over thousands of years) will be impossible. The co-evolutionary link with our food supply will have been irreparably broken.
And who will decide all this? Certainly not you.
Under this scenario, the obesity epidemic (itself not fully understood by science) may then be one of the least of our food health problems.
It's one thing to try and get trans-fats out of margarine once you've discovered your nutritional advice to consumers was flawed. But try removing retrospectively unwanted material once it has been embedded at the molecular level throughout the food chain and into its most basic resource - crop seeds.
The combination of hubristic scientists armed with the 'nuclear option' of nutritional warfare (genetic engineering), together with the short-term commercial greed of the agribusiness sector, may prove to be the ultimate recipe for food-chain breakdown from which there is no recovery.
The omega-3 'temptation' represents a major Trojan horse threat to humanity's food supply. How many are going to be taken in by it?
In the past opportunities to create novel foods such as margarine were limited. But with genetic engineering the opportunities are endless.
Who is going to take responsibility for the consequences?
NLPWESSEX
www.nlpwessex.org
Will GM Crops Deliver Benefits To Farmers?
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/gmagric.htm
The Acceptable Face Of Ag-biotech
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/monsantomaspossibilities.htm
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GM crops are the only way to solve Britons' diet failings, say scientists
Mark Henderson, Science Editor From The Times November 16, 2007 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2879567.ece
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'Three years after the [New York] city banned smoking in restaurants, health officials are talking about prohibiting something they say is almost as bad: artificial trans fatty acids. The city health department unveiled a proposal Tuesday that would bar cooks at any of the city's 24,600 food service establishments from using ingredients that contain the artery-clogging substance, commonly listed on food labels as partially hydrogenated oil. Artificial trans fats are found in some shortenings, margarine and frying oils and turn up in foods from pie crusts to french fries to doughnuts.
Doctors agree that trans fats are unhealthy in nearly any amount.....Under the New York proposal, restaurants would need to get artificial trans fats out of cooking oils, margarine and shortening by July 1, 2007, and all other foodstuffs by July 1, 2008. It would not affect grocery stores. It also would not apply to naturally occurring trans fats, which are found in some meats and dairy..... The U.S. Food and Drug Administration began requiring food labels to list trans fats in January.Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard University School of Public Health, praised New York health officials for considering a ban, which he said could save lives. 'Artificial trans fats are very toxic, and they almost surely causes tens of thousands of premature deaths each year,' he said. 'The federal government should have done this long ago.''
NYC Health Department Proposes Ban on Trans Fats
Associated Press, 27 September 2006 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215983,00.html
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What to make of recent news that butter is better than margarine
Environmental Nutrition, Jan, 1998
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0854/is_n1_v21/ai_n18607715
Fat is making headlines again. In a recent study, Harvard researchers confirmed what's been suspected for some time--that a little trans fat goes a long way toward increasing your risk of heart disease. But as is often the case with controversial conclusions, there's more here than meets the eye.
Still, the findings have dug a hole that seems sure to eventually bury trans fats. They're the fats produced when unsaturated fats are made harder and more stable by a process called hydrogenation. Hydrogenated fats have become nearly ubiquitous in our food supply, used in everything from margarines, shortenings (e.g. Crisco), crackers, cookies, baked goods and peanut butter, to fast foods and even some soups, beans and cereals.
In the Harvard study, a long-term look at the eating habits of more than 80,000 nurses found that those with the most trans fats in their diets had the highest risk of heart disease--regardless of their total fat intake. The researchers then estimated that cuting back on trans fats (by about four grams a day in the study) could slash the risk of heart disease in half. (The estimated American intake ranges from 8 to 12 grams a day; some say even more.)
If these calculations prove accurate, it is certainly worth your while to become an avid label reader, scorning products whose list of ingredients includes hydrogenated fats (whether partially or fully). Lipton has anticipated the rush to trans-free by announcing in October that its Promise brand is the first to offer an entire line of trans-free margarines. Other brands of tub margarines, such as Smart-Beat, claim transfree status, but Promise is the first to also offer trans-free stick margarine, useful in baking. Fleischmanns has answered the marketing challenge and will jump on the trans-free bandwagon in the Spring.
Two caveats: Total fat in these margarines remains the same, so there's no calorie savings. Moreover, Lipton acknowledges that in taking out the trans, saturated fats go up somewhat. Overall, however, there is still a 40% reduction in cholesterol-raising fats (saturated + trans).
But while margarine makers may be seizing the opportunity, manufacturers of other foods may not be so quick to act. Until they do, it will be difficult to find certain foods sans trans in a conventional supermarket. One option is to shop at health food supermarkets. They're way ahead of the game in offering a large selection of foods free of hydrogenated fats.
Where do saturated fats fit into the picture? Saturated fats like those in butter have not been exonerated, only slapped with a lesser charge than trans. They still raise blood cholesterol levels too. But according to the Harvard researchers, gram-for-gram, trans fats have a larger impact on heart health than saturated fats. But here's the kicker: Because saturated fats make up a larger portion of the fat in most diets than trans fats do, you get a bigger bang for your buck, so to speak, by focusing your efforts on cutting saturated fats.
The bottom line? Cutting both is important. If you keep your total fat intake low, by design you'll get less of both.