Origins of trans fat

Trans fats came to the United States from Germany; the land of pork sausages and Muenster cheese.
In 1901, after a French chemist had devised a way to alter matter by bombarding it with hydrogen atoms, a German scientist figured out how to apply that technology to convert oils into solids. These solid oils frequently referred to as “partially hydrogenated,” contain trans fats, and their debut as a food product came in the form of margarine. It should noted that small amounts of trans fats are found naturally in foodssuch as dairy products and meat, but these are chemically different and occur in small amounts to be almost negligible.

Margarine
Margarine did not get an ecstatic or much less a warm welcome in the country in the early 1900s. The dairy and meat industries were not keen to have it supplement butter and lard which at the time were staples of the American diet. Several states responded by passing “margarine laws” that limited the sale and distribution if this new rival. Even the pleasant yellow colour of margarine, made to mimic butter, was proscribed. Funnily, early margarines came in white blocks in order to evade the colour ban along a day capsule that one had to knead into them. However, margarine unlike butter did not melt on hot days and was above all regarded as cheap.
It took the intervention of President Truman’s abolition of the margarine laws in 1950 before the producers got a break. Henceforth, margarine manufacturers took the liberty to begin selling it as it appears today, in quantities that, since about 1970, have been twice those of butter.

Butter and lard
One boon to margarine manufacturers was the growing consensus in the 1970s that saturated fats cause heart disease. Butter and lard were out. For the multitude of packaged products with saturated fats on the ingredients list, a replacement had to be found, and trans fat became the solution. They gave products both a long shelf life and the rich mouthful feel, as the industry calls it, that consumers like. Besides, trans fats gave products an edge because they were cholesterol-free, another dietary priority to emerge in the 70s.Margarinemanufacturers used the slogan “Healthy for Your Heart” and marketed the product like a drug to doctor.
How is it this line of thinking went unquestioned for so long? In Europe, Canada and the US a scattering of people pursued trans fats research from the 1960s on, but the studies were expensive and according to one researcher,” not very glamorous.” More importantly, those taking on this stepchild of a topic had to deal with the tidal wave of industry pressure unleashed against them at meetings, conferences, and events. Their papers were rebutted with unusual ferocity, and their research funding was scarce.
Dr Thomas Applewhite and Dr J. Edward Hunter, industry scientists employed, respectively, by Kraft and Proctor & Gamble (which held the original US patent for trans fat), were the principal forces behind this criticism. Given that they worked for two food giants, the potential for bias was apparent, but their ability to fund research (as well as their own encyclopedic knowledge of the field) meant they could exercise considerable influence.
“Applewhite and Hunter worked behind the scenes,” says Dr Randall Wood, a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University who has researched trans fats. “I would say they had ways of finding out if a paper was going to be reviewed on subject. There were papers, ironclad, indisputable evidence, and the reviews would be so negative. You would get paranoid”.
“Protecting trans fat from the taint of negative scientific findings was our charge,” says Dr Lars Wiedermann, who was a colleague of Applewhite’s and who used to work for Americans Soybean Association. (Soybean oil accounts for some 85 per cent of trans fats). “We spent lots of time, and lots of money and energy, refunding this work.”
One target was Dr Fred A Kummerow, 100, a professor (now emeritus) at the University of Illinois who looked at the effects of trans fats on pigs. Wiedermann says he and Applewhite “chased (Kummerow) at three or four different conventions. And our objective was to sit in the audience, and when he stopped talking, to raise a lot of question.” Kummerow admits that his early work deserves criticism, but the in tensity of the attacks “went beyond the sort of standard, respectfully exchange you’d expect among scientists.” It was enough to scare any tenure seeking scientists away from the subject.

Contention
Enig, in her own needling, relentless way at conferences and through publications, provoked special ire from Applewhite. Knocking around her office, she would pull out another study. “After I submitted it (to the Journal of the American Collage of Nutrition in 1990)”she recalls, “Tom Applewhite called up the editor of the journal and tried to convince her not to publish my work.”
“This was highly unusual, “says Dr Mildred Seelig, who was the publication’s editor at the time, and in fact she can’t recall another instance when she was similarly pressured.”I told him it was peer reviewed, and Mary Enig’s work had passed muster.”
For his part, Applewhite said he only asked to see the article before publication. Although he passed on in 2012, he was palpably bitter on the topic of Enig who died September last year. “I’ve written a lot on this subject, and I have very strong feelings. Mary Enig’s research – no, just forget it. Don’t waste your time with it I pointed out that she was wrong and that really made her angry.” Applewhite never agreed with Enig’s findings, and always referred to Willett’s work as “just a bunch of nonsense.”