FDA plans to ban trans fats

(Huffington Post, November 07, 2013)

The US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) has announced plans that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out all 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 in the US per year. While the amount of trans fats in the country's diet has declined dramatically in the last decade, Hamburg said they "remain an area of significant public health concern". To achieve the phase-out, the FDA wants trans fats to no longer fall in the agency's "generally recognized as safe" category, which is reserved for thousands of additives that manufacturers can add to foods without FDA review.