Fats & Protein vs. Carbohydrates (Part 5)

[Guest guest]

THE OILING OF AMERICA (part 5)

A USDA official confided to the land research group that

they " would never get money as long as they pursued the trans

work. " Nevertheless they did pursue it. Sampagna, Keeney and a

few graduate students, funded jointly by the USDA and the

university, spend thousands of hours in the laboratory analyzing the

trans fat content of hundreds of commercially available foods. Enig

worked as a graduate student, at times with a small stipend, at

times without pay, to help direct the process of tedious analysis.

The long arm of the food industry did its best to put a stop to the

group's work by pressuring the USDA to pull its financial support

of the graduates students doing the lipid analyses, which the

University of land received due to its status as a land grant

college.

In December of 1982, Food Processing carried a brief preview of the

University of land research19 and five months later the same

journal printed a blistering letter from Hunter on behalf of

the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils.20 The University of

land studies on trans fat content in common foods had obviously

struck a nerve. Hunter stated that the Bailar, Applewhite and Meyer

letters that had appeared in Federation Proceedings five years

earlier, " severely criticized and discredited " the

conclusions reached by Enig and her colleagues. Hunter was concerned

that Enig's group would exaggerate the amount of trans found in

common foods. He cited ISEO data indicating that most margarines and

shortenings contain no more than 35% and 25% trans respectively, and

that most contain considerably less.

What Enig and her colleagues actually found was that many margarines

indeed contained about 31% trans fat—later surveys by others

revealed that Parkay margarine contained up to 45% trans—while

many shortenings found ubiquitously in cookies, chips and baked

goods contained more than 35%. She also discovered that many baked

goods and processed foods contained considerably more fat from

partially hydrogenated vegetable oils than was listed on the label.

The finding of higher levels of fat in products made with partially

hydrogenated oils was confirmed by Canadian government researchers

many years later, in 1993.21

Final results of Enig's ground-breaking compilation were

published in the October 1983 edition of the Journal of the American

Oil Chemists Society.22 Her analyses of more than 220 food items,

coupled with food disappearance data, allowed University of land

researchers to confirm earlier estimates that the average American

consumed at least 12 grams of trans fat per day, directly

contradicting ISEO assertions that most Americans consumed no more

that six to eight grams of trans fat per day. Those who consciously

avoided animal fats typically consumed far more than 12 grams of

trans fat per day.

CAT AND MOUSE IN THE JOURNALS

The ensuing debate between Enig and her colleagues at the University

of land, and Hunter and Applewhite of the ISEO, took the form of

a cat and mouse game running through several scientific journals.

Food Processing declined to publish Enig's reply to Hunter's

attack.

Science Magazine published another critical letter by Hunter in

1984,23 in which he misquoted Enig, but refused to print her

rebuttal. Hunter continued to object to assertions that average

consumption of trans fat in partially hydrogenated margarines and

shortenings could exceed six to eight grams per day, a concern that

Enig found puzzling when coupled with the official ISEO position

that trans fatty acids were innocuous and posed no threat to public

health.

The ISEO did not want the American public to hear about the debate

on hydrogenated vegetable oils—for Enig this translated into the

sound of doors closing. A poster presentation she organized for a

campus health fair caught the eye of the dietetics department

chairman who suggested she submit an abstract to the Society for

Nutrition Education, many of whose members are registered

dietitians. Her abstract concluded that " . . . meal plans and

recipes developed for nutritionists and dieticians to use when

designing diets to meet the Dietary Guidelines, the dietary

recommendation of the American Heart Association or the Prudent Diet

have been examined for trans fatty acid content. Some diet plans are

found to contain approximately 7% or more of calories as trans fatty

acids. " The Abstract Review Committee rejected the submission,

calling it " of limited interest. "

Early in 1985 the Federation of American Societies for Experimental

Biology (FASEB) heard more testimony on the trans fat issue. Enig

alone represented the alarmist point of view, while Hunter and

Applewhite of the ISEO, and Simpson, then with the National

Association of Margarine Manufacturers, assured the panel that trans

fats in the food supply posed no danger. Enig reported on University

of land research that delineated the differences in small

amounts of naturally occurring trans fats in butter, which do not

inhibit enzyme function at the cellular level, and man-made trans

fats in margarines and vegetable shortenings which do. She also

noted a 1981 feeding trial in which swine fed trans fatty acid

developed higher parameters for heart disease than those fed

saturated fats, especially when trans fatty acids were combined with

added polyunsaturates.24 Her testimony was omitted from the final

report, although her name in the bibliography created the impression

that her research supported the FASEB whitewash.25

In the following year, 1986, Hunter and Applewhite published an

article exonerating trans fats as a cause of atherosclerosis in the

prestigious American Journal of Clinical Nutrition26, whose

sponsors, by the way, include companies like Procter and Gamble,

General Foods, General Mills, Nabisco and Quaker Oats. The authors

once again stressed that the average per capita consumption of trans

fatty acids did not exceed six to eight grams. Many subsequent

government and quasi government reports minimizing the dangers of

trans fats used the 1986 Hunter and Applewhite article as a

reference.

Enig testified again in 1988 before the Expert Panel on the National

Nutrition Monitoring System (NNMS). In fact she was the only witness

before a panel, which began its meeting by confirming that the cause

of America's health problems was the overconsumption of " fat,

saturated fatty acids, cholesterol and sodium. " Her testimony

pointed out that the 1985 FASEB report exonerating trans fatty acids

as safe was based on flawed data.

Behind the scenes, in a private letter to Dr. Fischer,

Director of the Life Sciences Research Office (LSRO), Hunter and

Applewhite charged that " the University of land group

continues to raise unwarranted and unsubstantiated concerns about

the intake of and imagined physiological effects of trans fatty

acids and . . . they continue to overestimate greatly the intake of

trans acids by typical Americans. " " No one other than

Enig, " they said, has raised questions about the validity of the

food fatty acid composition data used in NHANES II and. . . she has

not presented sufficiently compelling arguments to justify a major

reevaluating. "

The letter contained numerous innuendos that Enig had

mischaracterized the work of other researchers and had been less

than scientific in her research. It was widely circulated among

National Nutrition Monitoring System agencies. Weihrauch, a

USDA scientist, not an industry representative, slipped it

surreptitiously to Dr. Enig. She and her colleagues replied by

asking, " If the trade association truly believes `that trans

fatty acids do not pose any harm to humans and animals'. . . why

are they so concerned about any levels of consumption and why do

they so vehemently and so frequently attack researchers whose

finding suggest that the consumption of trans fatty acids is greater

than the values the industry reports? "

land researchers argued that trans fats should be included in

food nutrition labels; the Hunter and Applewhite letter asserted

that " there is no documented justification for including trans

acids . . . as part of nutrition labeling. "

During her testimony Enig also brought up her concerns about other

national food databases, citing their lack of information on trans.

The Food Consumption Survey contained glaring errors—reporting,

for example, consumption of butter in amounts nearly twice as great

as what exists in the US food supply, and of margarine in quantities

nearly half those known to exist in the food supply. " The fact

that the data base is in error should compel the Congress to require

correction of the data base and reevaluation of policy flowing from

erroneous data, " she argued, " especially since the

congressional charter for NHANES was to compare dietary intake and

health status and since this data base is widely used to do just

that. " Rather than " correction of the data base, " [The]

National Nutritional Monitoring System officials responded to

Enig's criticism by dropping the whole section pertaining to

butter and margarine from the 1980 tables.

Enig's testimony was not totally left out of the National

Nutritional Monitoring System final report, as it had been from the

FASEB report three years earlier. A summary of the proceedings and

listing of panelists released in July of 1989 by Director

Fischer announced that a transcript of Enig's testimony could be

obtained from Ace Federal Reporter in Washington DC.27

Unfortunately, his report wrongly listed the date of her testimony

as January 20, 1988, rather than January 21, making her comments

more difficult to retrieve.

The Enig-ISEO debate was covered by the prestigious Food Chemical

News and Nutrition Week 28—both widely read by Congress and the

food industry, but virtually unknown to the general public. National

media coverage of dietary fat issues focused on the proceedings of

the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute as this enormous

bureaucracy plowed relentlessly forward with the lipid hypothesis.

In June of 1984, for example, the press diligently reported on the

proceedings of the NHLBI's Lipid Research Clinics Conference,

which was organized to wrap up almost 40 years of research on lipids,

cholesterol and heart disease.