Sunday, November 10, 2013

FDA's trans fat decision: An opening for regulating salt, sugar?

Responding to the Food and Drug Administration's move to banish trans fats from the nation's diet, some public health advocates grumped Thursday that the agency was playing catch-up to a trend already well underway nationwide. Still, many of the same experts expressed hope that the FDA's move will open the way to a new era in the agency's regulation of food additives. By setting several new precedents, the FDA's decision on trans fats may bring some of our most beloved ingredients -- salt and sugar -- under new scrutiny by the agency, they predicted. "Sodium is next," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a Harvard University epidemiologist and cardiologist at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In this case, said Mozaffarian, the FDA has acknowledged a scientific consensus on trans fats: that they are hazardous to the public's health. The role of excess dietary sodium in eroding public health has drawn a similar scientific consensus, he added. That should be an equally powerful prod to FDA action, said Mozaffarian. Tom Neltner, an analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C., said that sugar, too, may become a target in the wake of Thursday's FDA decision. In regulating food additives, the FDA has historically focused on removing chemicals that cause death and acute injury, Neltner said. With Thursday's trans fat decision, the agency showed that it is willing to step in when a food additive contributes to chronic diseases that kill many people slowly...more

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