Authors: Mary Enig
Other organizations soon fell in behind the AHA in pushing vegetable oils instead of animal fats. By the early 1970s, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the American Medical Association, the American Dietetic Association, and the National Academy of Sciences had all endorsed the lipid hypothesis and cautioned Americans to avoid animal fats.
Soon Congress jumped on the vegetable oil bandwagon. In 1977, George McGovern’s Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs published “Dietary Goals for the United States.” Citing U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data on fat consumption, the report stated categorically that “the overconsumption of fat, generally, and saturated fat in particular…have been related to six of the ten leading causes of death” in the United States. The report urged Americans to reduce overall fat intake and to substitute polyunsaturates for saturated fat from animal sources—margarine and corn oil for butter, lard, and tallow.
Opposing testimony included a moving letter—buried in the voluminous report—by Dr. Fred Kummerow of the University of Illinois, urging a return to traditional whole foods and warning against the use of soft drinks. In the early 1970s, Kummerow had shown that trans fatty acids caused increased rates of heart disease in pigs. A private endowment allowed him to continue his research, for government funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health refused to give him further grants.
Enter Mary Enig
That same year, Mary Enig, a graduate student at the University of Maryland, began research on the levels of trans fatty acids in foods and the effects of dietary trans fatty acids on important enzyme systems in mice (mice react to drugs and other chemical carcinogens in a way similar to humans). When she read the McGovern Committee report, she was puzzled because she was familiar with Kummerow’s research and knew that animal fat consumption was declining, not increasing. So how could the McGovern Committee find a connection between animal fat and heart disease?
Enig’s own analysis of the same USDA data that the McGovern Committee cited pointed to very different conclusions: that people eating animal fat actually had
less
heart disease (as well as less cancer, another concern of the committee) than those who ate vegetable oil. She wrote a paper describing her findings, which was published in the Proceedings of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) in July 1978. Her paper used the McGovern Committee’s own data to refute its conclusions that animal fats cause heart disease and cancer. She noted further that the data pointed a finger at trans fatty acids as possible causes of these diseases. In conclusion, she called for further investigation.
Mary and the other University of Maryland researchers recognized the need for more research in two areas:
While some studies indicated that trans fatty acids posed no danger in a normal diet, Mary and her colleagues were not so sure. Some research indicated that the trans fats contributed to heart disease. Mary’s own research, published in her 1984 doctoral dissertation, indictated that trans fats interfered with enzyme systems in the body that made carcinogens harmless and increased enzymes that made carcinogens more toxic.
Mary Enig Remembers
My paper rang alarm bells throughout the food industry. In early 1979, a representative from the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers came to see me. Visibly annoyed, he explained that both his association and the Institute for Shortening and Edible Oils (ISEO) kept careful watch to prevent articles like mine from appearing. My paper should never have been published, he said, since ISEO was supposed to be “watching out.” As he put it, “We left the barn door open, and the horse got out.”
He also challenged the data from the USDA that the committee and I had both used. He knew this data was incorrect, he told me, “because we give it to them.” He didn’t say the data was intentionally incorrect, but I had my suspicions.
A few weeks later, the same fellow met with me and the other members of the lipids group at the University of Maryland, this time accompanied by an ISEO adviser who also represented Kraft Foods, plus representatives from Central Soya and Lever Brothers (manufacturers of margarine and shortening). Clutching a two-inch stack of newspaper articles reporting on my article (including one in the
National Enquirer
), he shook them at me indignantly.
When I repeated this earlier admission that the margarine lobby had given the Department of Agriculture incorrect food data, his face flushed red with anger.
He also warned our lipids group that we would never get any more funding if we continued our current research: a survey of trans fats levels in supermarket foods. Incredibly, we were alone in attempting to gather this data since government databases at the time contained no reference to trans fats.
We continued nevertheless, and eventually published a paper on our findings, but the industry was true to its word. The lipids group at the University of Maryland never got another penny for trans fat research, and as the professors retired, the group’s effort was gradually abandoned, except for some ongoing analysis for the USDA.
During his initial visit, the rather indiscreet National Association of Margarine Manufacturers representative also revealed that he had dropped in on the FASEB office in an attempt to pressure them to publish letters to refute my paper without giving me the chance to respond, as was customary. But the editors resisted the pressure and allowed me to reply to a series of letters criticizing my paper.
My reply stressed the correlation between vegetable fat consumption, especially trans fat consumption, and serious disease, including heart disease. I noted that the data warranted more thorough investigation, but no one was doing it.
At that time there was no data regarding the amount of trans fats in common foods. What’s more, the data in U.S. government databases on any type of fat content in foods was often incorrect, Mary found.
To remedy this situation, Joseph Sampagna and Mark Keeney, lipid biochemists at the University of Maryland, applied to the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the USDA, the National Dairy Council, and the National Livestock and Meat Board for funds to look into the trans fat content of common American foods. Only the National Livestock and Meat Board came through with a small grant for equipment; the others turned them down. One USDA official privately revealed that they would never get money as long as they pursued the trans fat work.
Nevertheless, they did pursue it. Sampagna, Keeney, and a few graduate students, including Mary, funded jointly by an existing USDA stipend for graduate students and by the university, spent thousands of hours in the laboratory analyzing the trans fat content of hundreds of commercially available foods. Mary herself, at times with a small stipend, at times without pay, helped direct the tedious process of analysis.
In December 1982,
Food Processing
carried a brief preview of the University of Maryland research. Five months later, the journal printed a blistering letter from Edward Hunter on behalf of the ISEO. Hunter was concerned that the Maryland group would exaggerate the amount of trans fat found in common foods. He cited ISEO data indicating that most margarines and shortenings contained no more than 35 percent and 25 percent trans, respectively, and usually considerably less.
Mary and her colleagues found that many margarines indeed contained about 31 percent trans fat (later surveys by others revealed that Parkay margarine contained up to 45 percent trans fat), but many shortenings found ubiquitously in cookies, chips, and baked goods contained more than 35 percent. She also discovered that many baked goods and processed foods contained considerably more fat from partially hydrogenated vegetables oils than was indicated on the label. This finding was confirmed by Canadian government researchers many years later, in 1993.
Mary’s groundbreaking final results were published in 1983 in the
Journal of the American Oil Chemists Society.
Her analyses allowed University of Maryland 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 Ameircans consumed no more than 6 to 8 grams per day. People who delibrately avoided animal fats typically consumed far more than 12 grams of trans fat per day, while vulnerable teenagers who ate a lot of processed snack foods typically took in 30 grams or more of trans fats a day.
Mary and her colleagues at the University of Maryland, opposed by the ISEO representatives, continued their debate in a form of cat-and-mouse game running through several scientific journals. The ISEO representatives peppered the literature with articles that downplayed the dangers of trans fats, used their influence to discourage opposing points of view from appearing in print, and responded to the few alarmist articles that did squeak through with “definitive rebuttals.” For example, Hunter continued to object to assertions that average consumption of trans fat in partially hydrogenated margarines and shortenings could be more than 6 to 8 grams per day—a concern that puzzled Mary, since the ISEO also claimed that trans fatty acids posed no threat to public health.
As the debate continued through the 1980s, Mary testified before several expert panels. Early in 1985, for example, for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), she reported on a series of University of Maryland studies indicating that trans fats might promote heart disease. Her testimony was omitted from the final report, although her work was listed in the bibliography, giving the impression that her research supported the assertions by other witnesses that trans fats were safe.
In other testimony, Mary pointed out that claims of trans fats’ safety were based on flawed data. She argued that the percentages of trans fats should be included on food nutrition labels and cited the lack of information on trans fats in national food databases. Finally, she urged that Congress mandate correction of the databases and reevaluate dietary recommendations based on erroneous data.
Nevertheless, orthodox medical agencies remained united in promoting margarine and vegetable oils over animal foods containing cholesterol and animal fats. They maintained this position even though the official literature contained only a handful of experiments indicating that dietary cholesterol plays a major role in determining blood cholesterol levels. And many of these studies drew conclusions from flawed methodology that produced erroneous results.
In 1984, scientists who disputed the lipid hypothesis were invited to speak briefly at the NHLBI-sponsored National Cholesterol Consensus Conference, but their views were not included in the panel’s report for the simple reason that NHLBI staff generated the report even before the conference convened. Dr. Beverly Teter of the University of Maryland’s lipid group discovered this disquieting fact when she picked up someone else’s papers by mistake just before the conference opened and found that they contained the report already written, with just a few numbers left blank.
In 1987, the National Academy of Sciences published a booklet containing a whitewash of the trans fat problem and a pejorative description of palm oil—a natural fat high in beneficial saturates and monounsaturates that, like coconut oil and butter, has nourished healthy populations for thousands of years, and, also like coconut oil and butter, competes with hydrogenated fats because it can be used as a shortening.
The following year, the Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health urged that low-fat foods should be more widely available. Project LEAN (Low-Fat Eating for America Now), sponsored by the J. Kaiser Family Foundation and a host of establishment groups such as the AHA, the American Dietetic Association, the American Medical Association, the USDA, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control, and the NHLBI, announced a publicity campaign to “aggressively promote foods low in saturated fat and cholesterol in order to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer.”
Other scientists too were attempting to make the public aware of their concerns about partially hydrogenated fats. Fred Kummerow at the University of Illinois, blessed with independent funding and an abundance of patience, carried out a number of studies published in scientific journals between the early 1970s and the present, indicating that trans fats increased risk factors associated with heart disease, and that fabricated foods such as Egg Beaters, which are made with vegetable oils, cannot support life. George Mann, formerly with the Framingham project, possessed neither funding nor patience—he was, in fact, very angry with what he called the “diet/heart scam.” His independent studies of the Masai in Africa, described earlier, had convinced him that the lipid hypothesis was “the public health diversion of this century…the greatest scam in the history of medicine.” Mann resolved to bring the issue before the public by organizing a conference in Washington, D.C., in November of 1991.
Mary Enig Remembers
In 1989, I joined Frank McLaughlin, director of the Center for Business and Public Policy at the University of Maryland, in testimony before the National Food Processors Association. It was a closed conference, for NFPA members only. We had been invited to give “a view from academia.” I presented a number of slides and warned against singling out classes of fats and oils for special pejorative labeling. A representative from Frito-Lay took umbrage at my slides, which listed amounts of trans fats in Frito-Lay products.
I offered to redo the analyses if Frito-Lay would fund the research. “If you’d talk different, you’d get money” was the response. (Ironically, Frito-Lay now claims that their products contain no trans fats.) Next, I urged the association to endorse accurate labeling of trans fats in all food items, but conference participants—including representatives from most of the major food processing giants—preferred a policy of “voluntary labeling” that was lax in alerting the public to the presence of trans fats in their products. It has taken over 15 years for the FDA to mandate trans fats labeling, and that was done only after a committee of scientists concluded that processed trans fats are unsafe at any level. The new labeling is due on January 1, 2006. It’s good to have your research validated after all these years—but we have a long way to go, because these agencies still condemn saturated fats, saying they’re “as bad as trans fatty acids.”