US Food and Drug Administration to remove partially hydrogenated oils more than a year after it said it would and after decades of lobbying by health advocates

The US Food and Drug Administration will all but eliminate partially hydrogenated oils from the food supply by 2018, it announced on Tuesday, almost a year and a half after the agency first announced its intention to do so.

“The FDA’s action on this major source of artificial trans fat demonstrates the agency’s commitment to the heart health of all Americans,” said the FDA’s acting commissioner Stephen Ostroff. “This action is expected to reduce coronary heart disease and prevent thousands of fatal heart attacks every year.”

The FDA’s decision will not go into effect for three years. The agency said this will allow companies time to reformulate their products or apply for an exemption.

The decision comes after decades of lobbying by health advocates and scientists who say there is a scientific consensus that the artificial oils commonly called “trans fats” clog arteries and contribute to heart disease.



“There’s no real reason for having it in the food supply,” said Alice Lichtenstein, Gershoff professor of nutrition and science policy at Tufts University. “What we really want to do is provide the US population with the safest food supply possible.”

The oils themselves are the result of a heating process that turns normal vegetables oils such as soybean and cottonseed oil into a solid shortening. During the process, hydrogen molecules are bubbled through the oil. The process increases the shelf life of oils by making the compounds more stable. It’s worth noting that fully hydrogenated oils appear harmless. Only small amounts of trans fats occur in naturally in some animal sources.

The oils were popularized in the 1950s, when it was thought that they would be healthier than saturated fats. Americans turned to products such as trans fat-laden margarine in droves after the federal government recommended a cutback in saturated animal fats.

Today, there is a broad scientific consensus that the oils contribute to heart disease and are linked to type two diabetes.

A young nutritionist at the University of Illinois discovered some of the first evidence that the oils could be unhealthy in 1957, when he found large amounts of the fat in the clogged arteries of patients who died of heart attacks. The scientist, Fred Kummerow, followed that discovery with decades of scientific papers, despite that his findings wouldn’t be widely accepted until decades later.

In August 2013, with the help of San Diego attorney Gregory S Weston, Kummerow sued the FDA for its inaction, saying it had violated the New Deal-era legislation that granted the FDA authority over food safety. By November, the FDA had responded to the lawsuit by issuing the tentative ruling.

Kummerow, now 100 years old, still produces research at the University of Illinois as his lawsuit against the FDA continues. A man whose beliefs about nutrition continue to run up against scientific conformity, Kummerow is also still frying his morning eggs in butter.

“I was glad that they finally [took time] think about it, and actually do it.” said Kummerow, noting that more than 600,000 Americans still die of heart disease each year.

The FDA’s first regulatory actions on trans fats came about 10 years ago, when partially hydrogenated oils were widely used in processed foods such as margarines, biscuits, pastries, cookies, crackers, frozen pizzas, popcorn and in restaurant fryers. In 2006, the FDA required companies to disclose the amount of trans fats on food labels.

Since that time, a massive reformulation of processed foods using the oils has occurred, Lichtenstein said. Retailers including Walmart no longer carry food items with manufactured trans fats, many margarine producers have stopped using partially hydrogenated oils, New York City has banned the oils in fryers, and large companies such as Frito Lay have abandoned them.

Still, the food industry hasn’t welcomed the new regulations. Officially, the FDA will revoke the oils’ “generally recognized as safe”, classification. Companies proposing to use the oils would then be required to seek exemptions from the FDA to use the oils, while proving they are safe for human consumption.

Even after a massive reformulation, lobbyists for food industries, such as the Snack Food Association (SFA), the American Frozen Food Institute and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, among a half dozen others have urged the FDA to delay implementation.

“After reviewing the agency’s tentative decision, SFA has concerns about the agency’s suggestions to possibly revoke the generally recognized as safe status of [partially hydrogenated oils] and urges the agency not to finalize its tentative determination,” the SFA wrote in a paper submitted to the FDA.

The paper asked the FDA to delay implementation of its decision for up to nine years for small companies, arguing that partially hydrogenated oils have, “been shown to be only contributor of a myriad of potential risk factors in chronic disease,” and that small food companies may not be able to bear the cost of reformulation.

The FDA said the three-year compliance period would allow companies to “reformulate products”, although many companies were already in the process of doing so.