相信科學 天然脂肪更健康

Why would you buy a processed food that tastes worse than what it was designed to replace, doesn’t exist in nature, and helps kill you?

一種加工食品的口感不如它打算替代的食品，而且並不存在於大自然之中，還會加速死亡，你爲什麼還要買呢？

Either because you had no choice or had been misled about its essence. And that’s exactly the situation most Americans find themselves in regarding partially hydrogenated oils and the trans fats they contain.

要麼是你別無選擇，要麼是就它的本質被誤導了。這正是大部分美國人面對部分氫化油及其中包含的反式脂肪酸時的處境。

The good news is that — finally — the Food and Drug Administration is banning food containing trans fats, although really only sort of, and really only after overwhelming evidence (and more than one lawsuit) made their dangers impossible to ignore. And in typical pro-industry fashion, the F.D.A. is not only allowing companies three years to get trans fats out of most foods, but will consider manufacturers’ petitions to keep them in.

好消息是，美國食品與藥品管理局（Food and Drug Administration，簡稱FDA）終於禁止了在食品中添加反式脂肪的做法，儘管只是某種程度上禁止，而且已經有無從辯駁的證據（以及至少一宗訴訟），令反式脂肪的危險讓人無法忽視。FDA從其一貫支持產業界的立場作出決定，不僅允許企業花三年時間將反式脂肪從大部分食品中剔除，而且還會聽取製造企業要求保留反式脂肪的陳情。

Partially hydrogenated oils were invented 100 years ago, and quickly became popular in the form of margarine and vegetable shortening, like Crisco; their inclusion in thousands of other products and use as frying oil or coffee “whitener” is more recent. Thanks to their extension of shelf life, cost benefits to the processed food industry and the unfounded notion that they were healthier than the fats they replaced (asserted even by well-intentioned health organizations), they became ubiquitous. And they remain in many processed foods, supplanting real ingredients like butter, lard and less processed oils.

部分氫化油是在100年前發明的，很快就以人造黃油和起酥油（如Crisco）的形式風靡起來，再後來它被加入了成千上萬種其他產品中，並用作煎炸油或咖啡“伴侶”。由於能延長食品保質期，有助於食品加工業降低成本，同時人們還認爲它與被替代的脂肪相比更爲健康，所以它變得隨處可見。儘管它更加健康的說法並無根據，但就連一些善意的醫學機構也對它給予支持。如今，它仍然保留在很多加工食品中，替代真正的配料，如黃油、豬油，以及加工程度更低的其他油脂。

But partially hydrogenated oils have benefited no one except their manufacturers and the producers of the junk that includes them. And the three-year phaseout means more deaths from people consuming a substance that should have been taken off the market at least a decade ago. (Studies finding that trans fats were worse than animal fats were published in the early 1990s.)

然而從部分氫化油中受益的，只有這種物質的生產商，以及添加這些物質的垃圾食品的生產商。三年的退出期意味着，會有更多人因爲食用一種本應在至少十年前就退出市場的物質而死亡。（證明反式脂肪比動物脂肪更糟糕的研究，1990年代初就出現了。）

The F.D.A. knows this: Its acting commissioner, Stephen Ostroff, said that eliminating trans fats “is expected to reduce coronary heart disease and prevent thousands of fatal heart attacks every year.”

FDA瞭解這一點：代理局長斯蒂芬·奧斯特洛夫(Stephen Ostroff)表示，消除反式脂肪“預計可以降低冠心病發病率，每年避免數千人死於心肌梗塞”。

Why wait three years? Why not get these heart-stopping products off the shelves now, as we do when food is contaminated with E. coli? If the evidence is that trans fats are more harmful than other fats, and other fats exist, why delay? Protecting Big Food’s profits is the only possible answer.

那爲什麼要等三年？爲什麼不現在就讓這些扼殺心臟的產品下架，就像食品受到大腸桿菌(E. coli)污染後所做的一樣？既然證據表明反式脂肪比其他脂肪更有危害，而且又存在其他脂肪，爲什麼還要延遲？唯一可能的答案就是保護大型食品企業的利潤。

It may be really expensive for Big Food to replace partially hydrogenated oils — the F.D.A. itself estimates the cost at $6 billion — mainly because trying to mimic their performance is going to be tricky. Tough luck. No one can possibly estimate the profits that these oils have garnered or their damage to the public. The agency’s analysis also estimates that health care and other costs will decline by $140 billion in the next 20 years as a result of declining trans fat consumption.

讓大型食品企業更換部分氫化油，成本可能非常高昂（FDA自己估計，成本高達60億美元），主要原因在於模仿部分氫化油的表現十分困難。可那是這些企業的問題。誰都無法估計這些油脂爲企業製造了多少利潤，又對公衆造成了多少損害。FDA的分析還估計，未來20年裏由於反式脂肪消耗量的下降，醫療及其他成本能夠節約1400億美元。

The so-called alternatives already exist: you make croissants with butter and you use half-and-half, not “creamer,” in your coffee; anything else is a waste of calories anyway. Chronic diseases aside, it’s impossible to estimate how much good eating we’ve missed because misinformed people told us that Crisco is better than lard, margarine is better than butter, partially hydrogenated soybean oil is better than olive oil. (Yes, of course you can fry in olive oil.) I’ve made my best pie crusts with a mixture of butter and lard (some people insist all butter is superior), yet for 30 or 40 years I’ve had to listen to people tell me about the benefits of Crisco.

所謂的替代品已經存在了：做牛角包是用黃油，在咖啡裏倒半脂奶油而不是“伴侶”，畢竟其他任何物質都只是浪費卡路里而已。一些判斷有誤的人告訴我們，Crisco起酥油比豬油好，人造黃油比黃油好，部分氫化的大豆油比橄欖油好（沒錯，當然可以用橄欖油煎炸食物）。除了慢性病的問題，我們也很難估計因爲這些東西，我們錯過了多少品嚐美食的機會。我把黃油和豬油混在一起，做出了最棒的派皮（一些人堅持說，全用黃油才最好），然而過去三四十年裏，我一直都要聽別人對我誇耀Crisco的好處。

Once again it’s clear that too often the primary concern of government watchdog agencies is to protect corporate profits rather than public health. Otherwise we’d know how much sugar was in processed food, we’d have long since banned the routine use of antibiotics in animal production, we’d have salmonella-free chicken and we’d have forbidden the marketing and sale of soda and other liquid candy to minors.

此事再一次明顯地體現出，政府監管機關的主要關注點常常是保護企業的利益，而不是公衆的健康。如若不然，我們已經知道加工食品中有多少糖了，我們早就禁止動物產品中廣泛使用抗生素的做法了，我們吃的雞肉裏已經消除沙門氏菌了，我們也已經禁止向未成年人銷售碳酸飲料及其他含糖量過多的飲料了。

Instead, people sicken and die from eating “food” that’s known to be unhealthy. We let industry buy time — at our expense — while they research and develop alternatives that might be no better than the stuff they’ll replace, and whose safety still won’t be guaranteed by the F.D.A.

然而，人們仍然會因爲食用衆所周知不健康的“食品”而患病甚至喪命。我們犧牲自己的利益，讓食品工業拖延時間，好讓他們研發替代品，而替代品或許並不比他們替代的東西更好，而且FDA依然無法確保替代品的安全性。

Lard is not the “healthiest” food in the world but at least no one tells you it’s “better” than other naturally occurring fats, as was claimed about trans fats. No one with a palate ever said that partially hydrogenated oils tasted better than naturally occurring fats.

豬油自然不是世界上“最健康”的食品，但至少沒有人告訴你它比其他自然產生的脂肪“更好”，而反式脂肪曾經就敢這樣說。有正常味覺的人，都不會認爲部分氫化油的口感，比自然產生的脂肪更好。

And as everyone should know by now, a well-made pie, a beautifully frosted cake and perfectly crisped fried food are treats, occasional indulgences. Let’s make them as well as we can, rather than take short cuts using phony ingredients that don’t taste good and are unhealthy. That should be a one-two punch that clears the market of many “alternative” fats — and, for that matter, of many other ultraprocessed “foods” that benefit industry and harm consumers.

而到現在，估計所有人都已經知道，認真烘焙的派、包覆奶油的蛋糕、鬆脆的油炸食品是美味，有時候會讓人不能自拔。我們應該儘可能地把它們做好，而不是投機取巧地用那些口感不佳也不健康的假原料。這應當是把很多“替代”脂肪趕出市場的配套舉措。其他許多過度加工的“食品”只對食品產業有利、對消費者有害，它們也應該被趕出市場。