102 Year Old Scientist’s 1957 Trans Fat Findings Proved Correct

July 22, 2023 mike

Professor Fred A. Kummerow

Professor Fred August Kummerow was one of the first scientists to speak out against trans fats and published his findings in 1957. They were mocked and ignored.

Fast forward to today, and we now know that he was 100% correct. The U.S. government has finally banned the use of trans fats effective 2018, a full 61 years later!

Professor Kummerow died Wednesday, May 31st, 2017 in Urbana, IL at 102 years of age.

From the NY Times article titled, ‘Fred A. Kummerow, an Early Opponent of Trans Fats, Dies at 102‘:

Fred A. Kummerow, a German-born biochemist and lifelong contrarian whose nearly 50 years of advocacy led to a federal government ban on the use of trans-fatty acids in processed foods, a ruling that could prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths a year, died on Wednesday at his home in Urbana, Ill. He was 102.
His family announced his death.
He had been a longtime professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Artificial trans fats — derived from the hydrogen-treated oils used to give margarine its easy-to-spread texture and prolong the shelf life of crackers, cookies, icing and hundreds of other staples in the American diet — were ruled unsafe by the Food and Drug Administration partly in response to a lawsuit that Professor Kummerow filed against the agency in 2013, two months shy of his 99th birthday. The ban, announced in 2015, goes into effect in 2018.
(NY Times, June 2017.)

From FDA: Trans Fat,

…..In 2015, the FDA took the significant step of determining that PHOs (Partially Hydrogenated Oil), then the major source of artificial trans fat in the food supply, are no longer “Generally Recognized as Safe,” or GRAS. For the majority of uses of PHOs, June 18, 2018, was the date after which manufacturers could not add PHOs to foods.

[Book] Cholesterol is Not the Culprit: A Guide to Preventing Heart Disease – by Dr Fred Kummerow (2014)

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