Rand Paul Warns: FDA Is ‘Coming After Your Doughnuts’

In some of Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) first non-plagiarism news in a while, the Kentucky senator warned on Monday that the Federal Drug Administration’s new ban on trans fats was another intrusion by the nanny state, this one aimed at your morning indulgences.

“They’re coming after your doughnuts!” Paul told a crowd at The Charleston Meeting in South Carolina, in addition to taking a shot at New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempted soda ban.

“Some unelected bureaucrat has banned trans fat,” he continued. “So I say, we need to line every one of them up. I want to see how skinny or how fat the FDA agents are that are making the rules on this. Not only that, any of them with a BMI over 16, or whatever the number you’re supposed to have, I want to see them on the treadmill, and I want to see someone from OSHA lashing them while they’re working on the treadmill.”

“If we’re going to have a nanny state, and everybody’s gotta eat the right thing, and you can’t eat a doughnut, maybe we ought to enforce it on the government workers first,” Paul said.

New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait was quick to rebut Paul’s charges:

They are not, in fact, coming after your doughnuts. Trans fats are not essential to make doughnuts or, really, anything. Some restaurants still use trans fats because, even though they’re incredibly bad for you, they’re longer-lasting and slightly cheaper than other oils, and very few customers would ever know the difference.

Via: Mediaite.com

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FEDS COME AFTER TRANS FAT

Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade. Now, the Food and Drug Administration is finishing the job.

The FDA announced Thursday it will require the food industry to gradually phase out artificial trans fats, saying they are a threat to people's health. Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the move could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each year.

Hamburg said that while the amount of trans fats in the country's diet has declined dramatically in the last decade, they "remain an area of significant public health concern." The trans fats have long been criticized by nutritionists, and New York City and other local governments have banned them.

The agency isn't yet setting a timeline for the phase-out, but it will collect comments for two months before officials determine how long it will take. Different foods may have different timelines, depending how easy it is to find a substitute.

"We want to do it in a way that doesn't unduly disrupt markets," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods. Still, he says, the food "industry has demonstrated that it is, by and large, feasible to do."

Though they have been removed from many items, the fats are still found in processed foods, including in some microwave popcorns and frozen pizzas, refrigerated doughs, cookies, biscuits and ready-to-use frostings. They are also sometimes used by restaurants that use the fats for frying. Many larger chains have phased them out, but smaller restaurants may still get food containing trans fats from suppliers.

Via: Breitbart

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