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Posted on 2009-01-27 at 6:15 p.m..

DEATH ON THE GROCERY SHELVES
Written By Ken Welch; Edited by Phoenix

There is a life and death battle taking place � right now � on the shelves of your local supermarket. And it's your life or death I'm talking about! The situation is so explosive that all mainstream media sources that should be covering the fight are instead doing their utmost to hide its implications. Why? Because the primary reason that Americans have such incredibly poor health is in danger of being exposed.
It's all about something called "trans fat." What are Trans Fats? FDA makes it perfectly clear: "Trans fat is made when manufacturers add hydrogen to vegetable oil � a process called hydrogenation."

The New York City agency that oversees restaurants wants to ban them from the city's eateries. Most people outside of NYC are unaware of the uproar this has caused, and most of those that have noticed the story are puzzled over why it is considered a problem.

Chefs in the Big Apple are complaining publicly that they will not be able to prepare their usual meals because they cannot get uncontaminated ingredients. Others actually fry some foods in pure trans fats (these come in a brick, rather than a bottle - ask your local fish and chips restaurant) and have no desire to change, even though they're literally killing their customers.

Here's what the general public has being told about trans fats. Tiny amounts of common cooking oils convert at high frying temperatures to a type of fat that is not good for you.

The word trans refers to the transformation of molecules from their natural form into an entirely new substance. Since we are talking about something not found in nature, trans fats are by definition not fit for human consumption. The genetic code that governs the human body has no ability at all to correctly process any form of food not found in nature.

McDonalds was successfully sued over this in California several years ago and had to agree to make changes in the way they cook their french fries. In the meantime, the government has required that food labels include the amount of trans fats in foods, and many packages now proudly proclaim, "Zero Trans Fats." Observant shoppers are assuming that this must be a good thing, and are beginning to consider it in their purchasing.

Trans fats, along with other artificial nonsense they are putting in our foods, like High Fructose Corn Syrup are the primary reasons that Americans have such incredibly poor health, a situation that is just fine with the disease-care industry and the U.S. government itself, which loses money each day you survive beyond your retirement date.

Are we talking about tiny amounts? Far from it. Some products can contain as much as thirty percent trans fats. Every supermarket in the country contains several tons of trans fats on its shelves on any given day. Americans are eating trans fats by the carload, and have been doing so for years. In fact, this story is older than you might imagine.

Almost a century ago a couple of innovative Cincinnati candle makers named Procter and Gamble were searching for a cheaper alternative to the wax that was normally used in candle making. They settled on cottonseed oil as the cheapest possible base for their new wax. There was no other use for it and cotton seeds normally ended up in the nearest landfill. They tracked down a German process that used hydrogen to alter the molecular form of vegetable oils and obtained U.S. rights to the process in 1909, creating an artificial candle wax that was dirt cheap to produce.

Unfortunately for them, the market for candles was collapsing as more and more homes were being supplied with electricity. Searching for a new way to use their creation, Proctor and Gamble identified a hot marketing opportunity for an alternative to lard, also called shortening. At that time all cooking and baking was done with butter, lard, tallow (beef fat), and the amazingly healthy newcomer, coconut oil.

Reducing the amount of hydrogen caused the artificial wax to turn out soft, very much like a common form of lard, so in 1911 these future millionaires packed this junk in cans and sold it as an "all vegetable" food product under the brand name Crisco. At that time there was no particular reason anyone would actually want an "all vegetable" product, but they apparently felt it was a phrase with good marketing potential.

After the success of Crisco the next triumph was the production of an imitation butter, first called Oleo. Oleo didn't sound very healthy so a growing industry quickly settled on the name Margarine, instead. Hydrogenated vegetable oils, now the world's first true "franken-food," were also turning out to be a major asset to the packaged foods industry. Being artificial, these new oils never turned rancid or lost their basic texture, allowing packaged foods to sit on grocery shelves for several years without displaying any change in apparent quality. In fact, if you leave Margarine on your porch, neither animals or bugs will touch it, and it won�t ever spoil. This is because it�s not food!

These were tumultuous times. World War I, the 1920's, Prohibition, the Great Depression and World War II monopolized everyone's attention while these imitation foods achieved a prominent and permanent place in the American food supply. Vegetable oils have never had a significant role in human consumption other than Olive Oil, but a whole new "edible oils" industry was emerging to take advantage of the demands of the hydrogenation process for this low cost feedstock.

It actually took two generations before it became clear that something had gone badly wrong with American health. By that time, statistics showed a horrifying rise in the incidence of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, where these diseases were originally quite rare. And they were all exploding here, in the USA, and not elsewhere.

In 1900 there were zero recorded deaths from heart attack (myocardial infarction, or M.I.) in America. In 1950, after forty years of trans fat consumption, there were 500,000 deaths from heart attack and American families were in a state of panic.

Yet this was not apparent at the time, and people were demanding an olympian effort to find a cause for the nation's plummeting health. By the 1960's many harmful effects of artificial trans fats had been identified, but scientists working on this line of research discovered that they could not get published � the fix was in. Several multimillion dollar industries, with Procter and Gamble in the lead, were more than willing to flex their muscles to prevent harmful research from gaining any degree of credibility.

In fact, the fabulous profit potential of FrankenFats was not limited to their originators or to the farmers and refiners who produced vegetable oils. American "medicine" � under the control of the A.M.A. � had also seen it's initial explosive growth during this period, and much of that growth was fueled by profits from the rising tide of fatal diseases.

Statistical Excerpt from "Diabetes Mortality" by Constance Wynn Altshuler. Statistician, Detroit Diabetes Association. (620,000 rise in 10 years!)

1927 � 1,680,000
1928 � 1,760,000
1929 � 1,830,000
1930 � 1,840,000
1931 � 2,110,000
1932 � 2,300,000 1933 � 2,410,000
1934 � 2,440,000
1935 � 2,440,000
1936 � 2,500,000
1937 � 2,300,000

The American Heart Association was founded in 1924 and like all such associations, was the lobbying group for those who were making money from the disease. It soon became the first example of what you might call a "national disease manager."

It's mission (which must be pieced together from its actual activities) was aggressive and ambitious: First, to hide the actual causes of heart disease (protecting the food industry). Second, to discourage any attempt to find a cure. Third, to promote the business of the new guys on the block, the vegetable oil producers. And fourth, to promote and control millions of dollars in research funds. These funds could be used to send research in the wrong direction, create expensive medical and pharmaceutical products that would otherwise be unnecessary, and generally line the pockets of everyone involved.

This effort culminated at the moment that the notorious Framingham, Massachusetts heart study began to run out of steam. After years of study, researchers could still not find anything different about the people who were dying of heart attacks and those that appeared perfectly healthy. High cholesterol levels were noted in many cases, but they could just as easily be found in an otherwise healthy person. The data clearly indicated that the researchers were searching in the wrong direction.

Thus setting the opportunity to take advantage of a set of obscure Russian studies involving feeding cholesterol to rabbits, and a temporary cholesterol-lowering effect from feeding vegetable oil to humans. This became the foundation of an entirely new theory of heart disease, unsupported by any actual evidence, called the "lipid hypothesis." The new theory allowed all the A.H.A. objectives to be advanced in a single stroke.

In 1900, when heart attacks were virtually unknown, the American diet was dominated by high cholesterol foods and saturated fats. Yet a new campaign for "healthy diets" and the demonization of cholesterol, a substance vital to human health, (Low cholesterol is a reliable marker for a number of diseases including cancer � "The researchers did not expect to find the increased cancer risk from low LDL cholesterol levels" 7/25/07, from American College of Cardiology) would encourage people to consume greater amounts of vegetable oils and hydrogenated margarines, while opening up a new market for surprisingly dangerous cholesterol-lowering drugs which were ready to go and simply waiting in the wings for their cue.

These efforts have had little result in improving anyone's health, and the much vaunted Low Fat diets have failed to produce any real recognizable benefit other than temporary weight loss.

In the meantime, the production of hydrogenated oils has continued without the slightest pause. In the 1960's the immensely popular nutrition author Adele Davis, who would be demonized after her death by an industry she had helped control, warned her readers to stay clear of products containing hydrogenated oils because evidence was suggesting that they were accumulating in the body rather than being passed through as the industry claimed. However she failed to recognize the vegetable oil scam, and began recommending increased use of vegetable oils, which would eventually be recognized as a problem all by themselves.

The distortion of the natural human diet has forced dramatic changes in the way food is prepared. McDondalds achieved its fame in the U.S. by marketing french fries that were fried in lard, giving them a fabulous flavor that was almost impossible to resist. Intense pressure to use vegetable oils forced them to give up a good marketing advantage. If put under court order to eliminate the trans fats produced when you fry with unstable oils, when they can't go back to lard because of the intense programming of the population against natural fats, they would forced to close their doors.

Virtually all lard in the U.S. is plasticised and hydrogenated now, so that it can be sold in bricks with no need for refrigeration, making it unavailable from a health standpoint.

But there are still a few honest scientists around and true medical research continues, even though much of it has been forced to the alternative medicine venue, such as Integrative Medicine.

An onslaught of adverse reports during the early 1990's linked imitation fats to heart disease and cancer with evidence much stronger than was previously available.

The case against hydrogenated fats as the cause of type II diabetes (cell membranes too clogged to accept insulin) was also accumulating, all leading to increased interest in the subject world-wide. Currently obscured in all this, is additional evidence regarding other distortions in the health of people who consume vegetable oils as their main source of fats, hydrogenated or not. Vegetable oils actually increase the risk of heart disease, regardless of everything you've heard.

The Common Belief

Saturated fats cause heart disease. Unsaturated fats, especially polyunsaturated fats, balance hormones, strengthen the immune system, and prevent cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, arthritis, and all types of inflammation. Some polyunsaturated fatty acids are so important to health that they are called essential fatty acids, or EFAs � you literally can�t be healthy without them. Polyunsaturated vegetable oils are the safest fats for cooking, especially deep-fat frying, and they�re the key ingredients in healthful salad dressings. Canola oil, flax seed oil, soy oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and other polyunsaturated vegetable oils are today�s true health foods.
�Wrong on all counts,� says Ray Peat, Ph.D., a physiologist who has studied hormones and dietary fats since 1968. According to Peat, every one of the above statements is incorrect. In fact, he says, the polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFAs in vegetable seed oils are the bane of human health � they actually cause cancer, diabetes, obesity, aging, thrombosis, arthritis, and immunodeficiencies. Their only appropriate use, he says, is as ingredients in paints and varnishes.

Source

Then, at the turn of the millennium, an Australian study reported that people who had consumed no hydrogenated fats for five years still had the same levels of this Frankenfood in their bodies that they did to begin with. Their bodies couldn't get rid of it!

That kind of story can only be suppressed for so long, and mounting pressure on the FDA from health activists finally produced a reluctant and lukewarm response. Doing its best to hide the name of the true culprit, FDA is now requiring the amount of "trans fats" to be included on food labels, leaving consumers to sink or swim on their own, depending on their level of awareness. This was the climax of a huge battle, because food manufacturers insisted that if they were required to disclose the actual amount of trans fats, there would have to be some government guideline that suggested what amount was considered safe.

Naturally, huge amounts of money are now flowing heavily to any institution that wants to research a possible recommendation implying that trans fats are either good for you, harmless in certain amounts, or somehow can be made to be good for you in the near future. This is going to be pure fraud. However it is nothing like the fraud that is already taking place right now on the supermarket shelf.

While the labeling requirement was under consideration, the National Academy of Science was asked to assist in determining allowable levels of "trans fats."

After reviewing the nightmare list of the known effects of hydrogenated fats, the National Academy of Science was left with no escape. Their 2002 report simply states, "There is no safe level of trans fat consumption." If you don't recognize it, this is the same language that is applied to known carcinogens.

Carcinogens are substances that can cause changes in the body that can lead to cancer.

Worse yet, and very revealing, this report is now four years old!

That's four extra years that we've been feeding this junk to our kids in that oh-so-nutritious peanut butter! And spreading it on our toast after fervent assurances from the American Heart Association that it was vital to our good health. And speaking of monstrous evil, the National Heart Association has now decided that it doesn't want to go down with the ship, and has issued a paper describing hydrogenated fats as harmful; all the time concealing their role in promoting and protecting them for all these years.

So here we are on the cusp of what should be a huge emergency change in the American food supply. Instead, all we have is one printed line on a label.

What a dilemma this is for U.S. Food producers. They have to list the amount of an ingredient they deem essential, while the government has already determined that, for your own safety, you should not allow even the tiniest amount to pass your lips! If there were any ethics in the food industry, or the government for that matter, there are about forty-thousand products on the supermarket shelves that would be gone right now. Instead, the response of a number of large corporations is simply to lie.

They would rather kill you and your family, than admitting what they've done, not to mention, rather than taking your money until the day you die from a chronic disease. When you look at the labels you'll find that many are claiming their product contains no trans fats at all, while the ingredient list clearly states that a hydrogenated vegetable oil is a significant ingredient by weight. I strongly urge readers to take a little tour down the grocery isle, and read some labels to learn who their friends are.

Anything with Hydrogenated, High Fructose Corn Syrup, or Aspartame in the ingredients is not natural food, but rather poison, regardless of labels saying "100% natural" such as Snapple and Capri Sun. Check your bagged microwave popcorn, your peanut butter, you jelly, your laughable diet soda, your Kool Aid, and everything while you�re at it. The lies are obvious.

It appears that there are legal loopholes in the FDA rules that are put there specifically to allow them to lie. That's the history of FDA in a nutshell, isn't it?

Cancer, heart disease, diabetes and food products that are made from factory-produced chemically altered junk are fabulous money makers for the disease-care industries, the government, and the expensive hospital treatments such as two-thousand dollar treatments for amputations due to diabetes, and terrible life altering misery for us, the consumers.

News media recently reported that the "health care" field, by which they mean the disease-care industry (medicine, pharmaceuticals, insurance), is now the leading driver of the American economy. No wonder.

In addition to the three killers, heart disease, cancer and diabetes, you will learn that hydrogenated oils are responsible for excessive weight gain, that they actually cause stored fat to migrate to the abdominal area giving that distinctly pregnant look to so many Americans, and that Hydrogenated oils disrupt a number of metabolic and hormonal systems, etc. (That's why so many seemingly good diets seem able to shrink everything but your gut.)

The one thing the media won't tell you is that the deadly nature of hydrogenated oils has been known for more than half a century and has been deliberately suppressed. And they'll never tell you that the disease-care industry is a key player that has knowingly supported the scam while milking it for every penny they could, in every way conceivable. After a century of incredible lies, the truth is hard to swallow.

Best wishes to you and your family; Ken Welch, Houston

Ken Welch
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