KFC - Out of the fat, not the fire (1/11/2006)

[Guest guest]

KFC - Out of the fat, not the fire (1/11/2006)

 

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7214

 

KFC's decision to cut the trans fats from its US restaurants isn't

quite the boon for good health as it at first seems.

Felicity Lawrence

The Guardian, Comment is Free, 1 November 2006

 

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/felicity_lawrence/2006/11/out_of_

the_fat_not_the_fire.html

 

 

KFC announced on Monday that it was changing its frying oil to

eliminate trans fats from its main meals in the USA. Monday as it

happens was also the day the New York City Board of Health began a

public hearing on whether restaurants in New York should be banned

from selling foods with trans fats on the grounds that they increase

the risk of heart disease and have no nutritional value. But the

pressure has been building up for some time.

 

Labelling regulations in the US have changed, forcing manufacturers

to own up to how much trans fat - produced by partial hydrogenation

of industrial oils - is in their products. A retired doctor had also

filed a class action four months ago against the company for selling

food with trans fats without telling its customers. The lawsuit was

supported by the campaign group, Center for Science in the Public

Interest (CPSI), which greeted KFC's news as an important milestone

and announced it will now withdraw its lawsuit. So that's a victory

for public health and consumer power then.

 

CSPI has certainly achieved remarkable progress in the US. But KFC

is not changing its recipes in the UK where it uses partially

hydrogenated rapeseed oil, although it says it has been researching

new fats here. Not enough lawsuits perhaps. Nor does the KFC website

for the UK tell customers how much trans fat is in its products,

although it tells me it will during 2007. You have to go to the UK

campaign group Which? for the information that a KFC meal contains

4.4g of trans fat according to its analysis.

 

And here's a curious thing. KFC in the US is switching from

partially hydrogenated soya oil to a new low-linolenic soya oil. The

new low-linolenic soya oil has only 3% alpha-linolenic acid compared

with 8% in standard soya oil. That alpha-linolenic acid is the omega-

3 fatty acid that is pretty short in the industrialised diet and

most of us could do with more of it rather than less. But it's a

bore to manufacturers because it's unstable. Hydrogenating was one

way to deal with it, engineering it out of the bean is another. And

yes, you've guessed, the new low-linolenic soy oil for KFC comes

from a soya bean developed by biotech giant Monsanto.

 

Monsanto's website explains how this new soybean, called Vistive, is

now being planted in large tracts of the American mid-west " to help

manufactures reduce the presence of trans fatty acids in their

products " . Vistive, its says, was " developed through conventional

breeding " . A puzzle then that Vistive soybeans also have the

trademarked GM Roundup Ready trait so that they can be sprayed with

the company's herbicide glyphosphate.

 

If you want to know how a new transgenic soybean can manage not to

be a new genetically engineered soybean, have a look at another

campaign website, the anti-GM Institute of Science in Society.

 

But here's the real conundrum. Thanks to subsidies and the muscle of

large US-based food multinationals, 20% of available calories in the

US now come from soy oil. Experts such as Joseph Hibbeln at the US

government's National Institutes for Health believe this

unprecedented change in our diets is not only responsible for

cardiovascular disease but is changing the architecture and

functioning of the brain.

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,1924356,00.html

 

His theory is that the dramatic rise in omega-6 fatty acids mainly

from oils such as soya, have flooded out the omega-3 fatty acids we

need to build the brain, as well as for vascular health, because

they compete for the same metabolic pathways.

 

If he's right, companies like KFC are leaping out of the fat

straight into another oil-fuelled fire. But don't worry Monsanto is

on the case. It has another new modified soya bean in the pipeline -

Vistive omega-3, due to become available around 2011-2013. Perhaps

they hope customers won't have noticed this other problem before

then. It's taken over a decade for progress on trans fatty aids

after all.

 

There is of course another simpler way - just stop eating so much

industrial oil, full stop. But then KFC couldn't sell so much fried

chicken.