Trans fats are pure evil. Everybody knows it by now; they clog your arteries with plaque, they cause your heart to fail and may even create new pimples. But how exactly did this manmade, artificial fat push aside millennia-old staples like butter and coconut oil and wriggle its way into every corner of America?
The trans fat story has barely lasted for over a hundred years. Trans fats have gone from an obscure yet impressive scientific discovery, to culinary revolution, to heart saving superstar, and finally, to a feared ingredient which is clinging on to life by its mere fingertips.
Make no mistake that trans fats are finally on their way out. After many battles, and many pimples created, and many old folks wondering why pies and fried chicken don’t taste the same anymore, the day is coming where you don’t have to walk into a supermarket and dodge these shady fats.
For years, this website has criticised trans fats; the main article on trans fats written four years ago now, and since that day, there’s been nothing but grim news for trans fat headquarters. Trans fats have lost their powers and are fleeing to distant corners of the world. Even popcorn is now trans fat free.
This is how trans fats burned brightly yet ultimately couldn’t win the war, from well before day one, to the present day.
How the 19th century set the stage
Back in the 1800s, before cars, highways and the railway rush, most long haul meat transportation was conducted via steamboats. The voyages were long, and because food storage techniques were highly unadvanced compared to today, curing the meat with salts was vital.
Beef can be cured, but not as effectively. Pork, on the other hand, can be turned into ham with ease. Butchers had plentiful experience, for salt pork had long been a ration eaten by soldiers, and this continued through the civil war. Cincinnati gained the nickname Porkopolis in 1835, due to being the national headquarters of swine transportation, and the herds of pigs which roamed the streets.
The result was that pork was the dominant meat of the 19th century. Byproducts were plentiful, and that’s why lard was the nation’s top cooking oil in the 19th century, despite the word sending a shiver down cardiologists’ spines today.
Lard’s dominance in kitchens was also helped by high demand from candle and soap manufacturers. Joining lard was butter, a staple dating back thousands of years. You could also buy beef tallow and lamb tallow, but for much higher prices.
Every one of those fats is mostly saturated, yet heart disease was almost non-existent during the 19th century. Each fat was completely natural. How did this change?
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To understand the birth of trans fats, you must first understand an old business conundrum – the massive oversupply of cottonseeds. Cotton began life as an ornamental plant, but as early as 1736, plantations were in action for clothing production. As shipping routes to England became viable, US cotton production expanded rapidly, from 600 pounds of cotton in 1784 to 200,000 pounds in 1790. After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, production hit a massive 40,000,000 pounds.
The problem was that the cotton seed was useless. The industry had vast amounts of waste product left over, which was either fed to animals as inferior livestock feed or sneakily dumped into rivers and oceans.
During the 1820s and 30s, the price of whale oil rose significantly, leaving people without fuel for their lamps, and by the 1850s, oil extraction technology had advanced sufficiently that cottonseed oil became a viable alternative. The problem was solved, but in 1859, a Colonel struck oil in Pennsylvania and demand for cottonseeds plummeted again.
Underhand tactics ensued; cottonseed oil was added to lard despite a complete lack of safety evidence. This also backfired, since after trying the same trick with olive oil, Italy banned the import of all American olive oil in 1883.
At this time, Procter and Gamble was a large candle-maker and soap producer. They had a partial solution, incorporating cottonseed oil into their recipes. Businesses did what they could, but the riddle of cottonseeds stretched on until the early 20th century…
…until finally, a scientific discovery saved the day. In the 1890s, a French scientist discovered that metal catalysts could be used to force a hydrogen atom into a molecular structure. In 1901, a German chemist called Wilhelm Norman decided to hydrogenate fat molecules, to see what would happen. He discovered that the liquid oil became semi solid, much more stable, and similar in texture to butter.
At that moment, the very first artificial trans fat was born into the world. In this lab, few could have predicted the chaos which they would unleash.
The Crisco revolution
Some months later, Norman sold the rights to his fat hydrogenation process to a British company, which in turn approached Procter and Gamble for a business deal in 1907.
Instantly, Procter and Gamble saw the potential, turning the nation’s vast stockpiles of cotton seeds into a hydrogenated oil with a white colour and fluffy texture. The end product was Crisco, an abbreviation of crystallised cottonseed oil. Crisco consisted of 50% trans fat, a fat which had no scientific studies examining its safety.
Nevertheless, Procter and Gamble quickly leapt into what was arguably one of the greatest marketing campaigns of all time.
With piles and piles of cottonseeds, Crisco was cheap to make, and undercut lard and butter with ease – Procter and Gamble ruthlessly exploited this affordability. They used vague slogans like “it’s all vegetable! It’s digestible!“, with such little evidence that they would be torn apart today.
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Their marketing was tailored specifically towards the Jews, boasting of Crisco’s kosher nature (unlike lard) and declaring that “the Hebrew Race has been waiting 4000 years for Crisco!”.
However, Procter and Gamble were also extremely innovative in their marketing, creating a cookbook where all 650 recipes used Crisco and handing it out to passersby on street corners.
For example, the cookbook criticised lard relentlessly, decrying the lardy smell it gave to recipes. They claimed to be “working towards an ideal“, and even claimed that Crisco was manufactured by cleanly uniformed workers in brightly lit rooms, putting wholesome images in the reader’s heads. The word “vegetable” appeared in almost every sentence.
One of the first sentences in the book was “the culinary world is revising its entire cook book on account of the advent of Crisco, a new and altogether different cooking fat“. Procter and Gamble tried hard to give a feeling of momentum and fashionability to Crisco: “And so, the nation’s cook book has been hauled out and is being revised. Upon thousands of pages, the words “lard” and “butter” have been crossed out and the word “Crisco” written in their place“.
Some of the boasted facts were true, such as Crisco’s stability, and its ability to give pie crusts added (if artery clogging) flakiness. However, the digestibility argument was that Crisco had a lower melting point than butter or lard, “thus allowing the digestive juices to mix with it“, and that its vegetable origins made Crisco “the easiest of all cooking fats to digest“. This idea is laughable, but back then it sounded like common sense.
It didn’t end there. Crisco acquired glowing testimonials from leading rabbis and doctors. Procter and Gamble organised high society tea parties where every cake was made with Crisco.
The result? Crisco was a glorious success, selling 2.6 million jars in the year of its release, and 60 million by 1916. Procter and Gamble wasn’t even a food company, yet thanks to several strokes of genius, the first big shift towards trans fats had occurred.
How World War 2 helped trans fats
For years, Crisco was powerful, yet not in full control. Housewives and restaurants stubbornly clung onto their beloved butter and the more affordable lard.
The low fat craze hadn’t begun in full force yet and neither had the anti-saturated fat craze. A 1913 study was conducted by Russian scientist Nikolay Anichkov, where rabbits were fed eggs and milk and developed heart disease (a flawed study, because rabbits are herbivores), but this failed to reach the mind of the average American.
When did the next shift occur? The early 1940s, because of a familiar villain called World War 2. Believe it or not, one of Adolf Hitler’s least famous crimes was encouraging the spread of trans fats. The US entered the war in December 1941, and by 1943, vital fat supplies were stretched thinly. Firstly, the US navy used lard to grease their guns. Secondly, the US was responsible for supplying civilians with fats across much of Allied territory.
Finally, the US armed forces used fats to produce glycerin, the main ingredient of the explosive weapon nitroglycerine. Glycerin was vital for everyday tasks like lubricating machinery, creating protective paints for planes and tanks, and creating cellophane for protective food wrappers for soldiers. Even soldier’s uniform dyes contained glycerine. Housewives were required to hand over waste household fats for glycerin production.
The result: lard was rationed in the USA until March 3rd 1944, while butter was rationed until November 23rd 1945. The replacements were the significantly cheaper shortening and margarine.
In 1913, Procter and Gamble was the cheerleader for trans fats. By 1943, the US government was on side. Then there’s margarine, another important topic, because it didn’t originally contain any trans fats. Margarine was invented in the mid-1800s when Napoleon 3 of France offered rewards to anyone who could invent a palatable butter substitute to be fed to the working classes.
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The result was oleomargarine; scientist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès extracted margaric acid from lard and created a semisolid fat. The earliest margarines were entirely animal-derived, but margarine slowly changed in the 1930s and 40s, leading up to the war, as technological advances made vegetable oils of many kinds more affordable.
One by one, food manufacturers turned margarine into a trans fat filled nightmare. Margarine itself hadn’t fully taken off yet due to furious opposition from dairy farmers, which led to yellow-coloured margarine being banned in numerous states, but this shift to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil versions meant that once World War 2 happened and margarine became necessary, trans fats had another opportunity to take over.
After 1945, fat consumption shifted back to butter and lard, but not completely. Household habits had changed, and factories themselves had shifted towards shortening and margarine production.
The 1950s – subtle but significant advances
By 1950, it was estimated that butter consumption was just 25% of levels in 1900. Vegetable oil consumption, largely in the form of trans fats, had risen by 200%.
Relentlessly, trans fats continued their rise. In the mid 1950s, the old bans against yellow margarine began to fall like dominoes. Minnesota had a particularly long history of restricting “oleomargarine and its kindred abominations”, as the state governor put it; it started with an outright ban in 1885, which the federal government overruled in 1886 by declaring margarine (then oleomargarine) to be a legal product nationwide. Minnesota then passed a crafty law commanding that all margarine must be sold as a pink colour, causing sales to plummet overnight, but this was overruled by the supreme court, declaring in 1898 that “pink laws” against foods were illegal.
The solution of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and countless dairy states was to ban yellow coloured margarine, giving butter an indestructible advantage. This was part of the “oleo wars” which raged for decades.
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Firstly, margarine made significant progress in 1950, when the federal government ended their nationwide margarine tax. Around 1960, old ladies still had to cross state borders to buy yellow margarine, but Minnesota finally repealed their yellow margarine ban in 1963. Similar stories were repeated across America, with Wisconsin holding out for the longest, because dairy farming was so central to its economy. Wisconsin dropped the ban in 1967, but only under the condition that restaurants must never serve margarine to customers over butter unless specifically asked.
Nevertheless, the trend was undeniable: the market for margarine had been loosened up significantly and so had trans fats.
1958 also marked the birth of the FDA’s Food Additives Amendment. Today, you always hear about chemicals and ingredients being listed as generally recognised as safe (GRAS), and this act created that system. The problem was that ingredients introduced into the food supply before 1958 didn’t have to be tested. This was a fateful decision, allowing trans fats to escape unscathed for decades.
Then there was a moment that railway operators dreaded – the birth of the Interstate Highway System, which connected every major American town and city so easily that George Washington would have been astonished. Initiated in 1956 and completed over 40 years, this transport revolution allowed chains of identical fast food restaurants to spread across America. McDonald’s and Wendy’s could be found serving identical menus with identical ingredients in lands as far apart as Florida and Oregon.
With their long shelf life, trans fats were perfect for transporting in trucks over many weeks. Unlike butter or lard, hydrogenated oils would still be fresh when they arrived in supermarkets or restaurants.
Trans fats were also perfect for McDonald’s branding, because they wanted customers to know exactly what taste to expect. This worldwide philosophy helped trans fats to spread to London, Berlin, and Toronto.
Yet it is was also during the 1950s that tiny cracks began to show. Dr Fred Kummerow, a future legend and lifelong opponent of trans fats, conducted a shocking study where feeding trans fats to pigs led to stiffened arteries and heart plaques.
1960s and 1970s – the war on saturated fat
However, this was barely a drop in the ocean compared with one nutritional trend: the war on saturated fats, which all began with a 1961 article in Time magazine. Ancel Keys had just persuaded the American Heart Association to adopt the first ever nutritional recommendations to warn against saturated fats. He accompanied this with his famous seven countries study, where he presented a clear correlation between saturated fat intake and heart disease.
The problem was that the original experiment included seventeen countries. Ancel Keys had selectively chosen the countries which would fit his saturated fat hypothesis.
For example, France’s diet was rich in cheese, yet heart disease was rare. Chile ate little saturated fat, yet their arteries were clogged. Keys excluded both countries.
It helped that since the early 1900s, heart disease had skyrocketed. This rise actually coincided perfectly with the rise of trans fats, and heart disease was much rarer before they were introduced, but Americans everywhere were terrified and took action when saturated fat was blamed. More and more men and women switched to margarine, shortening, and trans fats.
It would be decades before the fear abated; the 1968 Oslo study also discovered a heart disease correlation, yet was also fatally flawed. The saturated fat patients weren’t restricted in their other dietary choices, and ended up with much higher sugar intakes, while the polyunsaturated fat group received detailed instructions and supervision.
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Another headline grabber was the 1968 Finnish Mental Hospital Study, where low saturated fat diets were correlated with a lower heart disease risk in men, but not women. In the LA Veterans Study, the low saturated fat group did experience less heart disease, but had higher all cause mortality rates. The truly fatal flaw is that many of the old studies lumped trans fats and saturated fats together into one group due to their solid nature, when in reality, their molecular structure is completely different.
Decades later, a 2015 review in the British Medical Journal would vindicate saturated fats, but in the 1960s, it became established fact that saturated fats were evil. All advice to limit eggs, cheese and lard dates back to this time. Early doubters of trans fats like Fred Kummerow, Walter Willett and Mary Enig were torn apart by the rest of the scientific community.
On 1st July 1975, the Oleo wars ended: the last state margarine taxes ended in Minnesota and North Dakota, on the exact same day. Trans fats were now taking over.
The 1980s – when trans fats almost won
By the early 1980s, more scientists were having doubts about trans fats, including a group of Welsh Researchers in 1981, who published a paper outlining a connection to heart disease. They were ignored – mostly.
Instead, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) launched a massive campaign in 1984 to banish saturated fats from the food supply once and for all, and specifically replace them with trans fats, which they deemed to be healthy.
In the mid 1980s, butter survived, but trans fats were the default in muffins, cookies and pizzas nationwide. The largest holdouts of traditional saturated fats were coconut oil used in movie popcorn, and believe or not, fryers in McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast food restaurants. Mixtures containing 95% beef or lamb tallow were highly stable and therefore perfect for reusing in frying.
In alliance with the National Heart Savers Association, the CSPI organised demonstrations in front of McDonald’s. They mailed floods of postcards to the corporate offices of fast food chains to make their message heard. When the Maryland state legislature debated whether to add trans fat labelling to foods in 1988 in response to the Maryland University lipids research group’s concerns, which was another early example of dissent, CSPI chief Michael Jacobson stalked through the chamber handing out pro trans fat pamphlets.
Week in, week out, the CSPI published adverts accusing fast food companies of “poisoning America“, and by the late 1980s they had folded.
Burger King switched to vegetable shortening in 1986. McDonald’s followed. Movie theatres switched to shortening with a butter-mimicking chemical called diacetyl. The campaign had succeeded.
What’s more, the CSPI’s campaign only reinforced the negative reputation of saturated fats like butter. The CSPI actually knew of the negative studies and in 1988, published a report saying that “there is little good evidence that trans fats cause any more harm than other fats“.
This push marked the greatest leap forward for trans fats since the heart attack scares of the 1960s.
The 1990s – the brief reign of terror
By 1990, trans fats had reached their all time high. Go to a burger restaurant, and you would find trans fats. Go to the cinema, and you would find trans fats. Order a pizza in New York, which boasted of the finest Italian tradition, and you would ingest trans fats. Purchase a homemade muffin in a small, family-owned grocery store, and trans fats would still enter your body.
The 1990s were a period of darkness, with the only saviour being that some stubbornly clung onto butter. There was no escape in the 1990s unless you owned a tropical island lair.
It was estimated that a 1992 meal of chicken McNuggets contained 19.2 grams of trans fats, compared to just 2.4 grams out of a total of 54 grams of fat in 1982. This was a worldwide phenomenon, with Canadians having one of the highest intakes.
There was no coconut oil taking the health world by storm. Not only were trans fats omnipotent, but they didn’t even have to be listed on labels. Not only was avoiding trans fat impossible, but people didn’t know that they needed to. Trans fat free food labels were nonexistent. The 1990s were the deadliest time for American hearts ever.
Yet the 1990s were also the beginning of the downfall – when the negative studies began to flood in so overwhelmingly that nobody could ignore them.
In 1990, two Dutch scientists published evidence of a link between trans fats and high LDL cholesterol levels (the bad cholesterol) in the New England Journal of Medicine. Shortly after, a 1993 Harvard study found that eating trans fats raised the risk of heart attacks.
By 1994, the tide was truly turning, as a study estimated that trans fats were leading to an estimated 30,000 premature deaths per year. Another 1994 study found a 27% increased risk of a heart attack. Rising evidence led the World Health Organisation to make their first statement against trans fats, a simple declaration that people should limit their intakes.
The CSPI was using their old playbook, accusing fast food restaurants of poisoning the people, but instead, they were campaigning against trans fats, despite the fact that they were behind the massive push to introduce them in the first place. The CSPI acted as though they had mistrusted trans fats all along. Nowadays, all mentions of the CSPI’s 1980s antics have been scrubbed from their website, yet despite their hypocrisy, their newfound opposition did put the danger in the public’s minds.
The decade ended with a significant advancement – in 1999, the FDA proposed mandatory labelling of trans fat content on food labels.
The rule wasn’t official yet, and there was a long way to go, but the tight grip of trans fats was loosening. They would never regain the dizzying heights of the 1990s.
The year 2000 – the downfall accelerates
The new century began with the food industry fighting back, with all guns blazing, resistant to losing money and switching the oils in fryers and donuts yet again.
In 2003, the FDA’s 1999 proposals became official, but lobbyists had watered them down significantly. For example, while nutrition labels still had to list the grams of trans fat on food labels, they no longer had to mention its context in a daily diet, like giving percentages and RDIs.
Food manufacturers could also use the words “low in saturated fat” on trans fat rich foods, giving an illusion that the food was heart healthy despite the fact that it was loaded with the most heart damaging fat of all. This FDA ruling also created the classic loophole, the rule that a food can declare itself to be trans fat free if it contained less than 0.5 grams.
Fast food restaurants were playing their own games. In 2002, McDonald’s had made a glorious proclamation – trans fats would be phased out of their burgers, fryers, and muffins in response to health concerns. This was well publicised, but by 2003, the fast food chain had quietly delayed the switch, leading the CSPI to sue them. Similarly, the CSPI sued KFC in 2006, accusing them of hiding partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (AKA trans fats) in their recipes.
Trans fats were clawing back, but it didn’t last for long: the evidence was just too overwhelming. The momentum could not be stopped.
In 2002, the Institute Of Medicine detected a linear correlation between coronary heart disease and trans fat intake, and issued a clear warning: consume as little as possible, or suffer. In 2004, Denmark became the first country in the world to ban trans fats entirely.
Then came a symbolic blow: Crisco, the poster child of trans fats since the day they were invented, was sold by Procter and Gamble and reformulated its recipes in 2007 to contain less than 0.5 grams of trans fats.
In 2008, the CSPI decided that it was time to sue another fast food restaurant, and chose Burger King, who quickly pledged to banish trans fats. In 2007, Starbucks banished trans fats. By 2008, the quantity of trans fats in processed foods had decreased by 50%. The public also became more knowledgeable, as by the end of 2006, 84% of people had heard of trans fats.
In 2006, the CSPI uncovered another place where trans fats were lurking: hospital cafeterias of all places, and meals in the FDA’s own in-house cafeteria.
Progress was much more sluggish in Canada. By 2007, the Ottawa government had created a voluntary scheme with a two year deadline until regulations kicked in, believing that food manufacturers would do the right thing. Yet by 2010, there was still no ban. The government had planned detailed regulations, and even drafted a press release in 2009, but both were mysteriously scrapped at the last minute.
In response, the city of Calgary angrily initiated a ban of its own, but this vanished when the province of Alberta merged all regional health authorities into one. Tests in 2010 found that only 75% of processed foods met Canada’s recommended limit for trans fats, with margarine being particularly rich in them.
Back in the USA though, a new healthy heart oasis was born – New York City. In 2006, mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a trans fat ban, giving restaurants, most notably pizzerias, until 1 July 2007 to fully remove them.
Despite their complaining, most restaurants found replacements quickly. McDonald’s began removing trans fats early, in October 2006, while Burger King waited until the last minute. Wendy’s had already stopped using trans fats nationwide in August 2006. By June 1st 2007, 81% of New York’s restaurants had already stopped using them. Some New Yorkers were worried that fries would lose their crunch, but doctors pointed out that it beats having your arteries be crunchy.
The benefit was immense, as after 5 years, the amount of New York restaurants using trans fats in frying, baking, cooking or in spreads fell from 50% to 1.6%. The average trans fat content of noontime restaurant purchases fell from 2.5 grams to 0.5 grams.
Non-compliant restaurants faced fines of up to 2000 dollars, and on July 1st 2008, a second phase came into force, banning trans fats from baked goods like cakes and pie crusts. New York became the first trans fat free zone in the USA, but that wouldn’t last long…
2018 – the end is nigh
As of 2018, trans fats are officially on their knees. In the last few years, industry pushback has all but ceased.
After decades of hype, clever adverts, and flaky yet unhealthy pie crusts, trans fats are finally going extinct. The publicity pressure is greater than ever; Walmart demanded that its suppliers phase out trans fats in 2011, while in 2013, Long John Silver announced that they would eliminate trans fats by the end of the year. Then came the truest test of all: between 2000 and 2009, the amount of trans fats in people’s blood had fallen by 52%.
In 2009, Fred Kummerow, who first noticed trans fat’s heart destroying abilities way back in 1958, filed a citizen’s petition with the FDA at the grand old age of 94, to make them reconsider the fat’s GRAS (generally recognised as safe) status. The two year deadline passed and Kummerow had heard nothing, so in 2013, he sued the FDA for breaching their own policies. This was a high profile event, and a pressured FDA declared that they were reanalysing trans fats.
Then in 2015, the FDA announced their verdict: trans fats were no longer generally recognised as safe (GRAS). Trans fats and partially hydrogenated oils were banned, coming into force on June 18th 2018, with companies permitted to clear products until January 1st 2020.
This was the moment that Fred Kummerow had been waiting for for 55 years. Sadly, Dr Kummerow died in 2017 at the wise old age of 103, but he had just lived for long enough to fulfill his destiny. Note that Kummerow was working away in his personal laboratory until the day he died.
Canada’s progress remained weak, until 2017, when the new health minister suddenly banned trans fats, as one of her first acts in power. Canadian companies have until 2020 to finally eliminate trans fat laden products. Next up for a punch was the World Health Organisation, who estimated in 2018 that trans fats lead to the deaths of 500,000 people from heart disease annually. They declared war on the ingredient, announcing a 5 year plan calling for global elimination by 2023.
Thus, we finally reach the present day. Compared to 20 years ago, the difference in 2018 is massive; it’s perfectly easy to avoid trans fats by thoroughly inspecting supermarket labels, but you could also mindlessly stumble into a McDonald’s and avoid them.
Is their hope for trans fats? Yes, there is, for trans fats are fleeing to less regulated lands. In the Indian subcontinent, a yellow cooking oil called vanaspati is the default. Vanaspati resembles India’s beloved and traditional ghee, and it consists of partially hydrogenated or even fully hydrogenated oil, typically palm oil. It’s a trans fat picnic for all Indian citizens and it’s extremely cheap.
Indian restaurants and street vendors often reheat vanaspati numerous times, resulting in a dense elixir of free radicals. Rates of heart disease are soaring among Pakistani and Iranian men and vanaspati is one reason why. Third world countries are under enough economic stress; consequently, they’re slow to banish such fats. With rampant corruption, governments are also more vulnerable to food industry pressure.
That said, India is starting to take action after many delays. More unexpectedly, Thailand announced a trans fat ban on July 16th 2018. The big problem ahead for poorer countries will almost certainly be illegal adulteration.
Conclusion
From the moment the first Crisco jar hit store shelves, to much excitement, it took 80 years for trans fats to infiltrate every corner of America. In the end, victory defeated them, for the overexposure led to scrutiny like never before. Trans fats enjoyed 15 years of ultimate power, but it only took 15 years for their downfall to happen.
Nevertheless, there’s always a chance of a new fat to carry on trans fat’s legacy – an unresearched invention which turns out to be just as profitable yet just as unhealthy. Despite the heartwarming progress seen here, complacency is not an option. Countless chemicals and additives remain in the dominant position trans fats enjoyed 20 years ago – the phthalates in plastic which are linked to hormone disruption are one example.
The story of trans fats reveals many lessons, demonstrating how slow official organisations are to react to overwhelmingly negative evidence, and how inconsistent the experts are.
Consider the CSPI. To their credit, their campaigning and trigger happy suing has made a big difference since the 1990s, but they’ve never admitted that they were the most rabid, fervent proponents of trans fats of all back in the 1980s. Again, you’ll find nothing on their website but a wholesome story of principled opposition.
Regardless, the campaigning by dissidents like Mary Enig and Fred Kummerow paid off in the end. The truth could not be denied, no matter how much propaganda was produced.
Trans fats are one acne villain and one heart villain which we can finally wave goodbye to.
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