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?

一种加工食品的口感不如它打算替代的食品，而且并不存在于大自然之中，还会加速死亡，你为什么还要买呢？

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 partially¹ hydrogenated oils and the trans fats they contain.

要么是你别无选择，要么是就它的本质被误导了。这正是大部分美国人面对部分氢化油及其中包含的反式脂肪酸时的处境。

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，美国食品与药品管理局（Food and Drug Administration，简称FDA）终于禁止了在食品中添加反式脂肪的做法，尽管只是某种程度上禁止，而且已经有无从辩驳的证据（以及至少一宗诉讼），令反式脂肪的危险让人无法忽视。FDA从其一贯支持产业界的立场作出决定，不仅允许企业花三年时间将反式脂肪从大部分食品中剔除，而且还会听取制造企业要求保留反式脂肪的陈情。

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, supplanting² real ingredients like butter, lard and less processed oils.

部分氢化油是在100年前发明的，很快就以人造黄油和起酥油（如Crisco）的形式风靡起来，再后来它被加入了成千上万种其他产品中，并用作煎炸油或咖啡“伴侣”。由于能延长食品保质期，有助于食品加工业降低成本，同时人们还认为它与被替代的脂肪相比更为健康，所以它变得随处可见。尽管它更加健康的说法并无根据，但就连一些善意的医学机构也对它给予支持。如今，它仍然保留在很多加工食品中，替代真正的配料，如黄油、猪油，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.)

然而从部分氢化油中受益的，只有这种物质的生产商，以及添加这些物质的垃圾食品的生产商。三年的退出期意味着，会有更多人因为食用一种本应在至少十年前就退出市场的物质而死亡。（证明反式脂肪比动物脂肪更糟糕的研究，1990年代初就出现了。）

The F.D.A. knows this: Its acting³ commissioner⁴, Stephen Ostroff, said that eliminating trans fats “is expected to reduce coronary heart disease and prevent thousands of fatal heart attacks every year.”

FDA了解这一点：代理局长斯蒂芬·奥斯特洛夫(Stephen Ostroff)表示，消除反式脂肪“预计可以降低冠心病发病率，每年避免数千人死于心肌梗塞”。

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.

那为什么要等三年？为什么不现在就让这些扼杀心脏的产品下架，就像食品受到大肠杆菌(E. coli)污染后所做的一样？既然证据表明反式脂肪比其他脂肪更有危害，而且又存在其他脂肪，为什么还要延迟？唯一可能的答案就是保护大型食品企业的利润。

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 mimic⁵ their performance is going to be tricky⁶. Tough luck. No one can possibly estimate the profits that these oils have garnered⁷ 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.

让大型食品企业更换部分氢化油，成本可能非常高昂（FDA自己估计，成本高达60亿美元），主要原因在于模仿部分氢化油的表现十分困难。可那是这些企业的问题。谁都无法估计这些油脂为企业制造了多少利润，又对公众造成了多少损害。FDA的分析还估计，未来20年里由于反式脂肪消耗量的下降，医疗及其他成本能够节约1400亿美元。

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. Chronic⁸ 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.

所谓的替代品已经存在了：做牛角包是用黄油，在咖啡里倒半脂奶油而不是“伴侣”，毕竟其他任何物质都只是浪费卡路里而已。一些判断有误的人告诉我们，Crisco起酥油比猪油好，人造黄油比黄油好，部分氢化的大豆油比橄榄油好（没错，当然可以用橄榄油煎炸食物）。除了慢性病的问题，我们也很难估计因为这些东西，我们错过了多少品尝美食的机会。我把黄油和猪油混在一起，做出了最棒的派皮（一些人坚持说，全用黄油才最好），然而过去三四十年里，我一直都要听别人对我夸耀Crisco的好处。

Once again it’s clear that too often the primary concern of government watchdog agencies is to protect corporate⁹ 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 antibiotics¹⁰ in animal production, we’d have salmonella-free chicken and we’d have forbidden the marketing¹¹ and sale of soda and other liquid candy to minors¹².

此事再一次明显地体现出，政府监管机关的主要关注点常常是保护企业的利益，而不是公众的健康。如若不然，我们已经知道加工食品中有多少糖了，我们早就禁止动物产品中广泛使用抗生素的做法了，我们吃的鸡肉里已经消除沙门氏菌了，我们也已经禁止向未成年人销售碳酸饮料及其他含糖量过多的饮料了。

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，人们仍然会因为食用众所周知不健康的“食品”而患病甚至丧命。我们牺牲自己的利益，让食品工业拖延时间，好让他们研发替代品，而替代品或许并不比他们替代的东西更好，而且FDA依然无法确保替代品的安全性。

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.

猪油自然不是世界上“最健康”的食品，但至少没有人告诉你它比其他自然产生的脂肪“更好”，而反式脂肪曾经就敢这样说。有正常味觉的人，都不会认为部分氢化油的口感，比自然产生的脂肪更好。

And as everyone should know by now, a well-made pie, a beautifully frosted cake and perfectly¹³ 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.

而到现在，估计所有人都已经知道，认真烘焙的派、包覆奶油的蛋糕、松脆的油炸食品是美味，有时候会让人不能自拔。我们应该尽可能地把它们做好，而不是投机取巧地用那些口感不佳也不健康的假原料。这应当是把很多“替代”脂肪赶出市场的配套举措。其他许多过度加工的“食品”只对食品产业有利、对消费者有害，它们也应该被赶出市场。