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News & Views: Is Elimination Of Trans Fat From The U.S. Diet Enough?
Posted on February 12, 2014 by Stephanie Tammen | Categories: MD Lesson1-5, MD Unit1, Metabolic Disease | | Add comment |

It’s not often that nutrition scientists agree as to whether a food or nutrient is good or bad for you, so when an agreement is met it’s worth paying attention to! Synthetic trans fatty acids are one of those nutrients that nutrition scientists can agree is unhealthy since it can lower the “good” HDL cholesterol and increase the “bad” LDL cholesterol. Due to this overwhelming evidence the Food and Drug Administration has proposed a banning of trans fats in food products, which has the potential of eliminating them from the American diet completely. This new regulation does not come without its criticism however, as some nutritionists and dietitians fear that the real problem in American’s diet is saturated fat. Dr. Scott Grundy, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center says “In the push to reduce trans fats, people have been forgetting that saturated fats are much worse because there is a lot more saturated fat in the diet than trans fat”. Read more at The New York Times.