About ten years ago, some fifty years after concerns were first raised about a possible link between trans fats and heart attacks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled that partially hydrogenated oils, the primary dietary source of trans fats in ultraprocessed food items, were no longer “generally recognized as safe” in human food. Processed food manufacturers were given three years to reformulate their products or to request an exemption. This action was predicted to prevent thousands of fatal heart attacks a year. Multiply that by 50 years. 

Trans fats were used throughout the ultraprocessed food industry in cookies, crackers, cakes and pies; frosting and shortening; potato chips, microwave popcorn, French fries, and fried chicken; doughnuts, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, and frozen pizzas; stick margarine and non-dairy coffee whiteners. Trans fats entered the food supply in the early 1900’s in the form of Crisco®, short for “crystallized cottonseed oil.” Crisco® was invented in the late 1800’s as William Procter and James Gamble (Messrs. Procter & Gamble) sought an inexpensive fat to replace tallow, the costly raw material required for their candle- and soap-making businesses. By 1905 they owned eight cottonseed mills, and the knowledge to convert liquid cottonseed oil to a solid. With the candle market shrinking, they made a startling decision, in retrospect, to market Crisco® as a food. Cheap, and with an unnaturally long shelf life, it quickly became a staple in homes and factories. But it was only in the kitchen that it worked as predicted; with regard to its deleterious effect on human health, no consumers, or doctors, would know for generations to come. 

Immigrant communities eager to adopt American customs became lucrative markets for ultraprocessed-food manufacturers. For all kinds of newly minted Americans, margarine, “vegetable shortening,” and non-dairy “coffee whiteners” rapidly supplanted traditional fats. To attract ethnic markets, Procter & Gamble solicited endorsements from community leaders, organized picnics and other outings, printed cookbooks to showcase the use of its manufactured products in traditional recipes. 

Crisco® is no longer made from cottonseed oil, but it is still made from oils that are highly pro-inflammatory. And cottonseed oil continues to predominate in many manufactured products. Why? 

From a scientific standpoint, cottonseed oil is highly stable chemically. It is not easily broken down by heat, oxygen, or time. The more stable a product, the longer its shelf life and the greater its profitability. Cottonseed oil owes its chemical stability in part to the fact that it contains very high levels of omega-6 fatty acids. Omega-6 fatty acids, which are strongly pro-inflammatory, are a major contributor to the epidemic of chronic inflammatory diseases in Western society. 

Cotton seeds entered the food supply inadvertently, at a time when science understood virtually nothing about their pro-inflammatory properties. As a country, we are paying for cottonseed oil with our health. 

Replacing Manufactured Calories with Food

If present trends continue, half of all Medicare recipients are expected to carry a diagnosis of diabetes in the coming decades. Responsibility for the cost of the diabetes and obesity epidemics eventually comes to lie, therefore, at the feet of each and every one of us. Consumers have the power to transform the food supply to a greater extent than we realize. You vote every time you shop, every time a bar code passes a scanner. Why wait for the FDA to initiate an evaluation of the evidence against cottonseed oil when you can decline to purchase products made with it today? 

Short-term convenience cannot, must not, trump the long-term health of our communities. Learn to bake with olive, coconut, and sesame oil instead of margarine. Instead of non-dairy creamers, if you don’t care for dairy then try alternative milks (e.g., coconut, almond, soy, rice) in your tea and coffee. Like our ancestors, we can make this an opportunity to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. If we don’t spend our hard-earned dollars on nourishing food, then we will spend it at the pharmacy. The trans fat ban was a start.