8 beers you should stop drinking immediately

[bleme]

Those are more than zero....

If it is there, it shouldn't be labeled as zero...

By that reasoning, nothing should ever be labeled to have ZERO of anything - transfats, calories, salt, peanuts, dolphins - because they can't test for ZERO. All they can test for are detectable levels.

 

[Leithoa]

Again detection limits are the point at below which it is impossible to tell(within some confidence interval, 95% is common) whether the response of an instrument is simply noise of the system or an actual 0 reading.

Using this test , 0.499g is statistically the same as 0g.

That's a marketing game that is being played at the cost of the health of the consumer.

It's not a marketing game, it's how science works. Everything is reported with a confidence interval. The same nutrition label says there is 16mg of sodium. That might very well be 15.9999999g or 16.000000001 g but for all practical purposes it's 16g.

If you want them to change the detection limit you're going to have to lobby for a different test to be approved, and remove the current IR test from the approved list.

 

[boydster]

By that reasoning, nothing should ever be labeled to have ZERO of anything - transfats, calories, salt, peanuts, dolphins - because they can't test for ZERO. All they can test for are detectable levels.

Were dolphins one of the INGREDIENTS??

 

[fuzzy2133]

Didn't the foodbabe thing actually claim they use "fish bladder" to color beer yellow? Then she claimed white wine was the best thing to drink because there aren't any additives in it? It's been a while since I read her article, but it sure struck me as crap! Too bad it still has legs.

Yes she is dead set on beer is bad no matter what proof gets handed to her.

Chris Colby had a more entertaining column this week.

Lets sick the Food Baby on DHMO its is on the Internet so it must be true!

 

[bleme]

Were dolphins one of the INGREDIENTS??

Who knows? The can said "Dolphin Free", but I'm sure they don't test every can... ;-p

 

[boydster]

Who knows? The can said "Dolphin Free", but I'm sure they don't test every can... ;-p

Right, you made my point. If a company making food for human consumption doesn't know what they are using to make the food, we have found the source of the problem. Hint: it's not the testing equipment, nor is it the misled consumer.

I know there are no dolphins in my garden. If I make a salad and call it dolphin free, I don't need an asterisk. If I add anchovy sludge from a mystery can and don't know that the anchovies were caught without dolphins, I have no business claiming the salad its still dolphin free. Are dolphins trans fat free? I don't care, because they aren't in my garden.

My gripe isn't with the testing limit that goes along with the nutrition label. It is with the underhanded false declaration that goes on a big sticker like I linked to earlier, when the manufacturer knows they used ingredients containing trans fats. We can agree that is shady, no?

 

[hunter_le five]

I know there are no dolphins in my garden.

Prove it!

 

[fuzzy2133]

Right, you made my point. If a company making food for human consumption doesn't know what they are using to make the food, we have found the source of the problem.

I know there are no dolphins in my garden. If I make a salad and call it dolphin free, I don't need an asterisk. If I add anchovy sludge from a mystery can and don't know that the anchovies were caught without dolphins, I have no business claiming the salad its still dolphin free.

Oh no we have logic!!!!!

 

[bob1852]

By that reasoning, nothing should ever be labeled to have ZERO of anything - transfats, calories, salt, peanuts, dolphins - because they can't test for ZERO.

I agree.

All they can test for are detectable levels.

And if it is detected, it shouldn't be labeled zero.



We know partially-hydrogenated oil has trans fat. Fact. Ergo, anything with partially-hydrogenated oil should not be able to be labeled "Zero Trans Fats!"

 

[Leithoa]

And if it is detected

That's my point exactly!
Using the current test, transfats are not detected below 0.5g.

Would it be more scientifically accurate to say 'not detected' sure. How many walmart shoppers are going to know what a detection limit is?
Remember though, everything must bear the g of transfat.

When was the last time you heard of a water company using any fats anywhere near their product.
If my hypothetical company makes trail mix and we use 0.25Lbs of some magically 100% pure transfat in our product. If we make it by the ton is 1/4lb in any way going to have an effect on your diet? That's 0.0125% by weight for a 1 ton batch.
You get more transfat from 1/4lb of ground beef(2g/serving) than you will from 0.5g > transfat food.
All the hype is about 'low transfat diets' but I haven't found anyone willing to put a hard number on what 'low' is. It's not possible to get 0g total transfat, even eating 100% organic, fresh, fair trade, halal, kosher, non-GMO foods.

 

[boydster]

Prove it!

I have a moat with a shark in it (laser-beam-free for safety; I have kids...) that I feed enough to maintain strength but keep hungry enough to take down stray dolphins at a moment's notice. I don't claim to have shark free salads (who would want that, anyway, right?) as I have gone through several sharks while trying to figure out the best feeding schedule and anger-infusing training regimen. I don't need science-y testing to know that it would be wrong to try and claim to be shark free. That's a moral code my parents instilled in me that I refuse to compromise on. No dolphins have even entered the moat yet. But I'm ready, just the same.

 

[bob1852]

It's not possible to get 0g total transfat, even eating 100% organic, fresh, fair trade, halal, kosher, non-GMO foods.

Again, then don't label it like this:

 

[boydster]

If my hypothetical company makes trail mix and we use 0.25Lbs of some magically 100% pure transfat in our product. If we make it by the ton is 1/4lb in any way going to have an effect on your diet? That's 0.0125% by weight for a 1 ton batch.

If you are using it would you put a giant effing sticker on it declaring that you weren't? Or would you just let the nutrition facts label give the pertinent information for you? Don't pretend to be blind to the real issue here.

 

[boydster]

Remember though, everything must bear the g of transfat.

When was the last time you heard of a water company using any fats anywhere near their product.

Maybe I'm nitpicking, but that label makes no mention of trans fat like you say it should. Also, none of the ingredients require trans fat for production.

/nitpick

 

[Leithoa]

Sure a nitpick but if it is reporting 0g of any fat why would there be some grams of transfat? Here's some fruit flavored water to satisfy your nitpick

Your nitpick seems to miss the point where everything with a nutrition label must undergo tests for the same things.

Back to our fictional granola. If we follow the market trend of 100g granola being 1 serving. If my mixed batch is 2000lbs ~= 908kg = 9080 servings. We have 227g of transfat per batch. 227/9080 = 0.025g(0.225 cal) per serving.
This is well below the detection limit and statistically equal to 0. I would be in complete compliance by putting a 0g transfat per serving sticker on it. A person would have to eat 2kg before you got to the magical 0.5g of transfat.

Question: If labels read Transfat <0.5g would you(general) be happy or would you still be complaining about marketing games and inaccurate labels?

 

[hunter_le five]

I have a moat with a shark in it (laser-beam-free for safety; I have kids...) that I feed enough to maintain strength but keep hungry enough to take down stray dolphins at a moment's notice. I don't claim to have shark free salads (who would want that, anyway, right?) as I have gone through several sharks while trying to figure out the best feeding schedule and anger-infusing training regimen. I don't need science-y testing to know that it would be wrong to try and claim to be shark free. That's a moral code my parents instilled in me that I refuse to compromise on. No dolphins have even entered the moat yet. But I'm ready, just the same.

Ah, but what if there is some unspecified quantity of dolphin in your garden that you are simply unable to detect?

I would imagine that a murder of micro-dolphins (yes, they travel in murders, not flocks), or even a single regular dolphin discreetly atomized in the atmosphere over your house, could easily pass undetected beneath your testable threshold.

I'm afraid you're going to have to label all of your carrots with official FDA-approved labels stating "***Warning: this root vegetable may or may not contain undetectable levels of aquatic mammal bio-matter***".

You know... Just to be safe.



By the way, if anyone from the government calls, I am definitely NOT developing a ballistic dolphin-atomizer nor am I conducting tests with said atomizer over your house. For that matter, I have NOT developed a race of hyper-intelligent micro-dolphins that are bent on the destruction of the human race and unwittingly unleashed them on the public and which must be stopped at all costs.

But between you and me, you should probably get your soil tested.....


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[bob1852]

Question: If labels read Transfat <0.5g would you(general) be happy or would you still be complaining about marketing games and inaccurate labels?

I would be satisfied.

I just don't like labels that say "ZERO!" of something when one of the major ingredients clearly means that is isn't zero....

Example: cooking spray says zero grams of all fat, yet the #1 ingredient is oil.

 

[boydster]

Your nitpick seems to miss the point where everything with a nutrition label must undergo tests for the same things.

Perhaps you missed my post earlier that the Nutrition Facts label isn't the problem. It is the giant sticker affixed to the package of Corn Dogs made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil that declares the product to contain "ZERO GRAMS TRANS FAT!!!!*per serving" while the company making the corn dogs is perfectly well aware that they are using an ingredient containing trans fat. The food scientists and marketing gurus exploit a loophole to make a factually inaccurate claim without technically doing anything wrong in the eyes of regulators. Are we on the same page? Do you think that is a sound business practice?

Question: If labels read Transfat <0.5g would you(general) be happy or would you still be complaining about marketing games and inaccurate labels?

I'd be perfectly happy with that. What game is being played if they are using a factually accurate description?

 

[boydster]

But between you and me, you should probably get your soil tested.....

Are they small enough to swim in my pores and irritate my skin? I just got this rash......

 

[hunter_le five]

Are they small enough to swim in my pores and irritate my skin? I just got this rash......

Did I say micro dolphins? I meant nano-dolphins. Consult a physician immediately.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Leithoa]

the product to contain "ZERO GRAMS TRANS FAT!!!!*per serving"

If you run the FDA approved test you will get the same result. That one serving of the product contains 0g transfat. This label is factually accurate according to the tests they've run.
Since there are no confidence intervals on any nutrition labels how does one know that one serving of corn dogs is 275 calories and not 280? If you're on a calorie restricted diet those 5 calories might be mentally important to you. In the over all scheme of things they are unimportant.
What about sodium? High intake of sodium has been linked to high blood pressure If a product has less than 5mg of sodium they can call it sodium free. I don't see a huge campaign for 'factually accurate labels' for sodium.

Since you're(general) against factually inaccurate labels are you also petitioning tuna canners to label the mercury content in tuna? Mercury has a much higher impact on human health than transfat.
Are you writing letters to the FDA and your legislators to change either the tests being used or the labeling standards? Or are you just debating in online forums?

With accurate enough tests every nutrition label you have ever read is 'wrong' and a result of 'marketing games'.

 

[Hermit]

Carageenan is... it's carageenan. It's in lots of stuff. It's from seaweed. Some people apparently think it's carcinogenic, there doesn't seem to be any real support for that.

I think they mean Irish Moss.

What the hell is "Natural Flavors" doing on that list?

Yeah, that one gave me a good laugh. You can't use natural or unnatural flavors? What's left?

 

[boydster]

If you run the FDA approved test you will get the same result. That one serving of the product contains 0g transfat. This label is factually accurate according to the tests they've run.
Since there are no confidence intervals on any nutrition labels how does one know that one serving of corn dogs is 275 calories and not 280? If you're on a calorie restricted diet those 5 calories might be mentally important to you. In the over all scheme of things they are unimportant.
What about sodium? High intake of sodium has been linked to high blood pressure If a product has less than 5mg of sodium they can call it sodium free. I don't see a huge campaign for 'factually accurate labels' for sodium.

Since you're(general) against factually inaccurate labels are you also petitioning tuna canners to label the mercury content in tuna? Mercury has a much higher impact on human health than transfat.
Are you writing letters to the FDA and your legislators to change either the tests being used or the labeling standards? Or are you just debating in online forums?

With accurate enough tests every nutrition label you have ever read is 'wrong' and a result of 'marketing games'.

Tell you what. I'll add some of my urine to a bottle of water. It'll be a statistically insignificant amount, I promise. AND I'll even add a sticker to the water bottle declaring it to be "Urine Free!!!" You want me to send some your way?

Clearly, you haven't read my posts from the beginning. That's fine. I was probably one of the first to say that if you see a sticker declaring in huge letters that a product has "ZERO grams trans fat" with an asterisk indicating per serving, you are only fooling someone that doesn't actually read the ingredients. Anyone who really cares about avoiding ABSOLUTELY 100% of trans fat intake will read the ingredients and not the giant sticker with an asterisk. Anyone who doesn't really care won't pay any attention. Some DB that saw a late night news story about the evils of trans fat the night before and got a bug up their butt to avoid it for a day or two until they forget about it might see that sticker and feel comfortable trusting it. I'm not going to write to the FDA to protect stupid people from themselves. I do stand by the idea that a person should operate by some sort of moral code, though, and flat out lying about the ingredients due to a technicality is something a business shouldn't do, IMO. Frankly, I love me some corn dogs and I'll eat them knowing I'm ingesting trans fats even though the big sticker continues to lie to me. I make that choice, knowing full well what the consequences (however small) may be. If I were in the corn dog selling and box printing business, I would leave that sticker off the packaging. If the Nutrition Facts label still said 0g trans fat because I was below the testing threshold, so be it, but I would go out of my way to draw attention to something that isn't true. I also eat tuna sometimes, and I bet there is a dolphin or two that has been sacrificed for my enjoyment of a product that may or may not say "Dolphin Free." I don't believe the sticker, and I'd be much happier if there wasn't such an effort made by businesses to make those kind of statements while knowing they aren't entirely true on a technicality.

Now. Do you want some of my pee-free pee water or not? I had my B vitamins today, but those will probably be statistically insignificant too so I won't bother with the "Vitamin Enhanced" sticker this time.

 

[Leithoa]

Well, assuming you're healthy it is sterile

Just remember if I can detect urine using an FDA approved test it's not statistically insignificant.

The catch with your moral code is that you are legally required to test for transfat using an FDA approved test. If it contains less than 0.5g or is undetectable by the approved method you use, you are legally required to print contains 0g transfat.
So do you shutdown/sell Great Grandad's fishstick business and donate all the proceeds to heart research?
The only way to get them to print more precise labels is to change the stance of the FDA.

 

[bob1852]

If you run the FDA approved test you will get the same result. That one serving of the product contains 0g transfat. This label is factually accurate according to the tests they've run.
Since there are no confidence intervals on any nutrition labels how does one know that one serving of corn dogs is 275 calories and not 280? If you're on a calorie restricted diet those 5 calories might be mentally important to you. In the over all scheme of things they are unimportant.
What about sodium? High intake of sodium has been linked to high blood pressure If a product has less than 5mg of sodium they can call it sodium free. I don't see a huge campaign for 'factually accurate labels' for sodium.

Since you're(general) against factually inaccurate labels are you also petitioning tuna canners to label the mercury content in tuna? Mercury has a much higher impact on human health than transfat.
Are you writing letters to the FDA and your legislators to change either the tests being used or the labeling standards? Or are you just debating in online forums?

With accurate enough tests every nutrition label you have ever read is 'wrong' and a result of 'marketing games'.

For me it isn't the difference between 275 and 280. It is the difference between zero and more than zero.

And yes, I've written about salmon/tuna. Specifically, it is assinine that the FDA and EPA have different mercury threshholds. EPA says I shouldn't eat fish from a local lake because of elevated mercury, yet the FDA says the can of tuna from the store is fine (even though it has more mercury than the fish from the local lake).

I just want accurate labels. If they need to add that it's not a significant amount of fat or some other verbiage (i.e. this packake is sold by weight not by volume) to explain themselves, so be it. But don't tell me something has zero of something in it, when it you know it has more than zero in it.

 

[Leithoa]

For me it isn't the difference between 275 and 280. It is the difference between a zero and more than zero.

These are a result of the same thing and a point of my overall argument. Using the approved test 0.5g > transfat looks exactly the same as 0g transfat.
If you're an outside lab or QA tech who doesn't know the secret formula of 2 barrels of transfat per batch when you run a sample of corn dogs or whatever the instrument is going to spit out a reading of 0g transfat per serving.
It'd be like if I stood on a ladder in a field and counted mice for an hour. If I don't see any mice after an hour I record 0 mice per field.
Are there really 0 mice in the field or do I just lack the equipment to detect them?
I have no way of knowing with the technology given to me.

Assuming you mean written the FDA/legislators, I'm glad to see you practice what you preach.

 

[boydster]

Well, assuming you're healthy it is sterile

Just remember if I can detect urine using an FDA approved test it's not statistically insignificant.

The catch with your moral code is that you are legally required to test for transfat using an FDA approved test. If it contains less than 0.5g or is undetectable by the approved method you use, you are legally required to print contains 0g transfat.
So do you shutdown/sell Great Grandad's fishstick business and donate all the proceeds to heart research?
The only way to get them to print more precise labels is to change the stance of the FDA.

Maybe I'm not being clear. I'll write it in caps. PRINTING IT ON THE NUTRITION FACTS LABEL DUE TO LEGAL REQUIREMENT IS NOT EQUAL TO MAKING A NON-LEGALLY-REQUIRED EXTRA STICKER WITH AN EXCLAMATION POINT INDICATING THERE IS NOT AN INGREDIENT THAT IS CLEARLY LISTED IN THE INGREDIENTS.

The nutrition facts label contains information based on FDA testing. Fine. Using partially hydrogenated oil as an ingredient means you know there is SOME trans fat. Therefore, you have more than ZERO trans fat. By making a big icon on your product that declares you have Zero Grams Trans Fat, you are drawing undo attention to something that has no basis in fact. To use your verbiage: You are NOT legally required to affix an extra sticker to your product indicating all of the terrible things your product does NOT contain, yet for whatever reason the marketing division (you know, the folks who give the yea or nay on whether the packaging is ready for distribution) feels it is necessary to affix such a sticker to their product that states it has no trans fat even though it has partially hydrogenated vegetable oil as an ingredient. How is that not clear? PM me your address and I'll gladly send some pee water your way. I want a YouTube video of you opening and enjoying it.

Great. I'm bleeding from my eye lids now. I'm going to go eat a fish swim bladder and a quesadilla made with GMO corn.

 

[bob1852]

These are a result of the same thing and a point of my overall argument. Using the approved test 0.5g > transfat looks exactly the same as 0g transfat.
If you're an outside lab or QA tech who doesn't know the secret formula of 2 barrels of transfat per batch when you run a sample of corn dogs or whatever the instrument is going to spit out a reading of 0g transfat per serving.
It'd be like if I stood on a ladder in a field and counted mice for an hour. If I don't see any mice after an hour I record 0 mice per field.
Are there really 0 mice in the field or do I just lack the equipment to detect them?
I have no way of knowing with the technology given to me.

Assuming you mean written the FDA/legislators, I'm glad to see you practice what you preach.

I understand the statistics of it, I really do. My point is the are making big, shiny advertising saying "0g trans fat!!!!!" knowing 95 out of 100 shoppers (see what I did there ) are going to misinterpret it as a product with literally zero trans fats.

Let alone, the whole serving size misleading side of things. I like that many labels now include not only stuff per serving, but per package. Sorry, but a can of soup ain't 2 servings. But if you don't read that part, your can of soup only has 29% of your daily recommended sodium. Pretty good, huh? Well, who eats a half a can of soup?

 

[hunter_le five]

Tell you what. I'll add some of my urine to a bottle of water. It'll be a statistically insignificant amount, I promise. AND I'll even add a sticker to the water bottle declaring it to be "Urine Free!!!" You want me to send some your way?

......

Now. Do you want some of my pee-free pee water or not? I had my B vitamins today, but those will probably be statistically insignificant too so I won't bother with the "Vitamin Enhanced" sticker this time.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!! I'll even invite a few friends over and do a blind triangle test with a couple bottles of Dasani to see if we can determine which bottle has a statistically insignificant amount of Vitamin B.... And urine, but we can save that revelation for the big-reveal.

It's the least I could do after the whole dolphin rash fiasco....


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[boydster]

It's the least I could do after the whole dolphin rash fiasco....

DAMMIT hunter, that's why my eyes are bleeding isn't it!