Reducing trans fats

The Korea Food & Drug Administration has announced revised food labeling standards which make it compulsory to show the amount of trans fats in processed food such as bread, candy, chocolate, noodles and beverages starting from Dec. 1 2007, according to Chosun Ilbo:

"We completed an investigation of some 500 kinds of food including snacks and fast food children enjoy last year before implementing the measure,”said the director in charge of nutritional evaluation at the KFDA Park Hye-kyung. We notified each food company of the result and are looking at whether they are improving. Inspections will continue until artificially produced trans fats are gone completely.”

Japan needs to start moving to protect consumers from synthetic fats, but there has been little discussion so far. The World Health Organization recommends that trans fats should not make up more than 1 percent of total calories you take a day. Without labels, consumers have no way of knowing if food companies are making an effort to reduce trans fats or not.

Comments

Pandabonium said…
Good move on Korea's part. I hope Japan gets on the ball about this too.
Martin J Frid said…
Yes, I wonder why there is noone in the academic world in Japan who has raised this issue.

Thanks for the comment.

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