Patrick S

If I were an impatient person, I would just point out that I've answered this question at least two times already, and refer you to my previous answers. First of all -- whether something is "well or better" is a completely and inescapabably subjective judgement, no matter how much some foodies might like to think otherwise, and I don't doubt that there are those who actually prefer the texture of baked goods make with shortening. And according to at least some tests, like the one in Cook's Illustrated, the trans-shortening has a slight textural edge over the newer trans-free shortenings -- the different versions produce extremely similar, but not identical results. So, its not so much a question of why do you need them, because there is nothing you can't make without it, its a matter of different people having their own subjective opinions about what is pleasing to eat. ETA: Just so I'm clear, I don't think there is anything that can't be done well without shortening, and I think that doughs made with all shortening and no butter are blech. I just realize that this is my opinion, a subjective judgement.

Well you must not have looked terribly hard, because trans fats are not the only fats linked to heart disease, as the studies I cited earlier in this thread show in great detail. In most studies that examine the relationships between specific fatty acids and heart disease, similar relationships are found with both saturated and trans fatty acids (e.g. the massive WHI randomized study [Howard et al, 2006], discussed earlier in the thread). Once we start down the path of regulating the fat content of food, I see no reason not to believe that saturated fat content will be near the top of the list of parameters to be regulated. Indeed, to quote again from The 2005 USDA/HHS Dietary Guidelines for Americans: And that, of course, is merely your own personal opinion, and while you're certainly entitled to your opinion, don't kid yourself -- it is just an opinion. And the thing about opinions is that we all have our own, and they don't agree: you happen to think trans fats aren't necessary, while other people think full-fat milk isn't necessary, or butter isn't necessary, or alfredo isn't necessary, or meals with 1000 calories and 50 grams of fat arent necessary, and so on. Since we all have our own opinions, it seems to me that the only way to preserve my freedom to eat what I want is to preserve the freedom of others to eat whay they want, even if others happen to want to eat things like trans fats.

No, no beveling. The only "trick" really is inverting the loaf -- the top of the Pave is the bottom of the cocoa loaf, which is just rounded to the shape of the bottom of the loaf pan. Thanks so much for the kind words, everyone! I'll never be able to repay you all for the encouragement and motivation and warmth I've recieved. You all are truly the best! ← Patrick, I was wondering, I am going the Pave in a standard loaf pan, I wanted to know how far up do I fill the pan? I know I will have some batter left over. ← Oh, I don't know -- maybe half way or a little more.

So would I. In general I'm against unecessary regulation, and so I'm one of the nuts who thinks most of the drug laws cause much worse problems than they solve (witness little episodes in history like prohibition ...) ← Count me in favor of drug law reform too. Labelling would solve the invisbility problem, as was already pointed out, and you haven't explained why we should want to jump straight to an outright ban. Trans fats are no more "insidious" or "invisible" than any other nutritional ingredients were prior to their being labelled, or prior to educational campaigns intended to raise awareness about those ingredients. That statement seems nonsensical and, frankly, condescending. The dangers of trans fats are no harder to understand or explain that those of, say, saturated fats, illegal drugs, or nutritional villains other than fats. If it stops with trans fats, there will be precious little harm, except maybe to the principle that we have the right to eat what we want at a restaurant without government interference. Thus far, however, no one has explained why the slope isn't indeed slippery.

What you are asking is simply: are there gene-environment interactions, and the answer is emphatically yes. There are whole journals devoted to this subject. Genetic differences between individuals have major effects on how individuals respond to all types of things: food, drugs, pathogens. One example of this, as it relates specifically to fat metabolism, is the so-called Milano variant of the apolipoprotein AI gene, which appears to enhance the normal beneficial effect of HDL. In fact, recombinantly produced doses of this gene could end up being used a gene therapy for atherosclerosis. See this.

Yes, that is probably the prevailing theory for labelling amongst prohibitionists, though its not exactly my own reasoning for supporting labelling. I think labelling is good even if nobody changes their behavior as a result.

Emphasis added. You ruin an otherwise valid point when you exaggerate like that. I don't doubt that most people aren't much influenced by labels, but there are people, few though they may be, who do read labels, who care what they say, and who modify their choices based on labelling information.

That's my position almost exactly. I don't see it as my right, or the government's right, to force anyone to make healthy food choices, but I could readily support labelling for ingredients for which they are well-established health risks. If people know what's in it and eat it anyway, then yes, too bad for them. But its their health and their body and their life. . . Exactly.

I love Maldon but it's not fleur de sel, is it? ← You're right of course. In my experience though a lot of people use the term "fleur de sel" (technically) as a synonym for sea salt, since that's what fleur de sel is, just as many people refer to all sparkling wines as Champagne, and not just those produced in Champagne, France. Sorry if I confused things. mignardise, here is the article from Slate: Worth One's SaltFrom fleur de sel to kosher, which salt is best?. In their ratings, the Maldon won 4/5 of the tests of the 9 salts they tried, including 2 varieties of sea salt.

Maldon is good -- there was an article not too long ago in Slate magazine testing a bunch of salts, and I think they picked Maldon as their winner.

Beautiful, Patrick! Minus the dates (or not), but with the dark chocolate, I bet this would be wonderful with pistachio paste, too. ← Thank you, Pontormo. Baklava is really one of my favorite things, and I'd love to try more variations on it. Now that you mention it I'm kinda curious how nut paste-based filings would turn out.

Any chance of a recipe? ← For the buns or the tarts? The tarts use the pate sucree dough from Desserts by Pierre Herme, the Passion Fruit curd recipe is from Yard's Secrets of Baking, the banana cake recipes is the one popularized by Wendy DeBoard that's been floating around eGullet, and the jam recipes is from the package of pectin. The bun recipe is from Cook's Illustrated.

My understanding is that since 2004, when the US Standard of Identity for white chocolate was established, anything labelled as white chocolate sold in the US must contain 20% cocoa butter. El Rey is my favorite, but I like Lindt almost as well.

I think the diffference is that the trans fat is invisible. Anyone who spends more a minute a year thinking about it knows that the bowling ball-sized cheeseburger is bad for them. They're simply making a choice to eat it anyway. ← And you really think that your position is not astonishingly hypocritical? Wow! You think that people can and should have the right to eat bowling-ball sized hamburgers with dozens of grams of saturated fat, because they know it has an outrageous amount of saturated fat, but you would deny people the right to consume a gram or two of trans fats in a pie crust, even if they know what's in it? That's remarkable. Its almost like you think that saturated fat eaters have the right to make bad but informed diet decisions, but trans fat eaters don't. There is a solution to the problem of "invisible ingredients" -- its called labelling. Its not terribly complicated, and is in my view far more defensible than an outright ban.

It seems obvious from the above that you did not read my post #25, where I challenged the empirical basis for several of these claims. Since you are now repeating these claims as if they were established facts, I will repeat some of my critiques here. First, China appears to have a lower rate of heart disease than does France -- exactly the opposite of what you portray. According to the WHO's MONICA program, which monitors coronary event rates in 38 populations in 21 countries, Beijing has the lowest event rate of all the populations studied (81 per 100,000 men per year; 35 per 100,000 women per year). This is actually quite a bit lower than the rate for Tolouse, France, also monitored by the MONICA program. Tunstall-Pedoe H, et al, 1994. Myocardial infarction and coronary deaths in the World Health Organization MONICA Project. Registration procedures, event rates, and case-fatality rates in 38 populations from 21 countries in four continents. : Circulation 90(1):583-612. Second, I challenged your claim that the Inuit have a low rate of heart disease. Bjerregaard et al (2003), in their review of mortality statistics of Inuit in Greenland, Canada, and Alaska found that "the mortality from all cardiovascular diseases combined is not lower among the Inuit than in white comparison populations." Furthermore, they report that mortality from stroke is actually higher in the Inuit than in comparison populations. If you have recent, high quality mortality statistic that contradict this, I'd love to see them. Bjerregaard et al, 2003. Low incidence of cardiovascular disease among the Inuit--what is the evidence? Atherosclerosis. 166(2):351-7. Third, I would appreciate it if you provide scientific data on the relative rates of trans fat consumption in France and China. The argument you are making is crucially dependent on these data, so I would like to see what you evidence you are basing this on. As I pointed out in my discussion of Artaud-Wild et al (1993), which related cholesterol/sat fat intake in 40 countries and showed France as the only country having a much lower corononary mortality than predicted by cholesterol/sat fat intake. If your hypothesis is correct that lower trans fat consumption France explains this anamoly, then France would have to be unique among these 40 countries in terms of trans fat consumption. If you provide the data on relative rates of trans fat consumption, we can test this hypothesis quite easily. Artaud-Wild et al, 1993. Differences in coronary mortality can be explained by differences in cholesterol and saturated fat intakes in 40 countries but not in France and Finland. A paradox. Circulation 88:2771–9. From the abstract that would appear to be a review article, not a meta-analysis, but let's move on to your larger point. I've already agreed that trans fats may be a more "potent" culprit, on a weight-for-weight basis, than saturated fats. But to repeat myself once more, we consume several times more saturated fat in our diets than we do trans fats, which is why, for intance, the USDA/HHS dietary guidelines I cited earlier state that "intake of saturated fat is more excessive than intake of trans fats and cholesterol," and that "therefore, it is most important for Americans to decrease their intake of saturated fat." Epidemiological research which distinguishes between the effect of specific fatty acids on heart disease risk tend to show associations of very similar magnitudes between sat and trans fats and heart disease risk, and certainly support the view that saturated fats are as much or more a "more potent culprit in CHD." For instance: Those data are from: Kromhout et al, 1995. Dietary saturated and trans fatty acids and cholesterol and 25-year mortality from coronary heart disease: The Seven Countries Study. Prev Med 24:308-315. Note that the "r values," the correlation coefficients, are very similar for both fats, though there is actually a slightly stronger association with sat than with trans (0.88 and 0.78, respectively). To the extent that you are arguing that sat fat intake has no relation to heart disease, the evidence would seem to contradict you. In fact, many of the same studies which are used to estimate the effects of trans fat on heart disease control for saturated fat, and find an association for saturated as well. .

Apparently there is no acceptable level of trans fat, so yes. It is more akin to a toxin than a non-nutricious food choice. ← If you really believe that "there is no acceptable level of trans fat," if trans fats are "toxins" as per your lead paint analogy, then surely you would support, as a next step, a ban on dairy products (including butter) and meat in restaurants as well, or at the very least regulations limiting their use? As I've pointed out several times now, a substantial fraction of our trans fat consumption, about 20-25% according to Allison et al (1999), comes from our consumption of ruminant-derived foods, mostly dairy and beef. So, please explain: why stop with the trans oils? In your view, trans fats are unsafe at any level, and in fact are toxins analogous to lead paint. You wouldn't let restaurants serve lead paint to its constumers, so why would you abide them serving trans-fatty butter or beef? For instance, we could mandate that butter-flavored, trans-fat free shortenings, with their heart-healthy polyunsaturated oils, be used in place of butter. And that one step would also dramatically reduce the level of saturated fat. Now, you might object that butter is preferable -and I would agree- but once you assert that "there is no acceptable level of trans fat," and that it is a toxin analogous to lead paint, I don't see how you could oppose the butter and beef regulation. To do so would be tantamount to saying that you accept unacceptable levels of trans fat. . . Allison et al, 1999. Estimated intakes of trans fatty and other fatty acids in the US population. J Am Diet Assoc 99:166-174.

Huh? You are conflating two completely different policies: labelling requirements and outright bans. I wholeheartedly support labelling requirements -- its the ban I have problems with.

Have you read the whole thread before responding? I will assume not, since this question has already been answered above: there have been tests comparing trans-shortening to trans-free shortening which give a slight benefit texture-wise to the trans-version. Cooks Illustrated for instance:

Trans fats are bad for you as even a cursory look through medline articles will tell you. Exactly how bad is unclear, but the science suggests they are worse than naturally occuring fat. ← Trans fats are about as bad as saturated fats, as even a cursory look at the medline articles, or the research I discuss above (e.g. Howard et al, 2006), will tell you. They may be slightly worse than saturated fat on a weight-for-weight basis, but since trans-fat is a small proportion of our fat consumption compared to saturated fat, perhaps you could explain why it would be appropriate to regulate trans fat content but not saturated fat content of foods. The 2005 USDA/HHS Dietary Guidelines for Americans, states for example: ETA: USDA/HHS statement.

Yes, most of the damning research is from the last five or six years. I wouldn't give weight to a 1997 study without looking at what's come since. ← Um, the 1997 position is not a "study" -- it is a position statement made by leading experts on heart disease, reflecting data available at that time. Well, no, actually, they're not really like each other. FDA is a government agency created by congress and funded by taxpayers. AHA, on the other hand, is a non-profit, non-government organization whose stated mission is to reduce the mortality and disability from cardiovascular disease. I agree wholeheartedly, and I can't tell you how many thousands of hours (literally) I've spent doing just that. Far too often these discussions about nutrition and food safety are devoid of any discussion or critique of the actual scientific evidence.

A couple of things I've made recently: The tartlet is based on the Tart Maeva I had at the Vanille Patisserie in Chicago. The sweet tart shell is filled, from top to bottom, with strawberry jam, a disc of banana cake, and passion fruit curd. Sticky buns: Flickrs: #1 #2 #3

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...st_uids=7661131 In terms of an article I can read, the New York Times -- at least in this article -- does not concur with the conclusion that there's a consensus: ← Similarly, the American Heart Association's current position statement on Trans Fatty Acids, Plasma Lipid Levels, and Risk of Developing Cardiovascular Disease states regarding the epidemiological evidence: This is the statement that is currently on the American Heart Association website, however it was written in 1997.

Here is the part from Howard et al (2006, p.661) discussing the trends toward reduced CHD in the lowest sat fat and lowest trans fat groups: What is interesting to note here is that the hazard ratios for the low trans group and the low sat group are almost exactly the same (0.84 and 0.82), so the magnitude of the differences in CHD risk between these groups and the control group are almost exactly the same. The 95% confidence intervals are almost identical as well, at 0.67-0.99 and 0.69-1.02, respectively. Taken at face value, these results say that the group consuming the least amount of sat fat had a 18% reduced risk of CHD, and the group consuming the least amount of trans fat had a 16% reduced risk of CHD, compared to the control group. This certainly wouldn't seem to support the view that reducing trans fats is more important or has a greater impact on CHD risk than reducing sat fat does. This need not be terribly surpising, even if trans fats are worse than sat fats on a weight-for-weight basis, because we still consume a far greater amount of saturated fat than trans fats, so that a large reduction in sat fat intake could have a greater effect than a large reduction in trans fat intake.

Right, and there is also a mountain of evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease ← Is there really a "mountain" of evidence linking trans fats to heart disease? While there have been a few studies, I wouldn't characterize the evidence as anything near mountainous -- or near conclusive. ← Well, what I would say is that the nature of the evidence against trans and saturated fats are qualitatively very similar -- you have short-term metabolic studies of both, which tend to show that sat fat raises LDL, while trans raises LDL and decreases HDL. And you have epidemiological studies --which look at fat consumption in the real world over a length of time and relate it to endpoints like heart attack mortality-- which come to differing conclusions. Some find relationships and some don't. For instance, you probably remember that huge amount of fanfare earlier this year when the results of the Women's Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Dietary Modification Trial were published. This was a randomized, controlled trial of low-fat dietary modification, using a huge sample of women (almost 50,000) and a long follow-up time (8 years), universally described by epidemiologists as the "gold standard" of epidemiological studies of diet. The WHI study looked at the impact of the dietary modification on heart disease, breast and colorectal cancer. In terms of heart disease, the study found (to the shock of many, including me) that the lower-fat diet "had no significant effects on incidence of CHD [coronary heart disease], stroke, or CVD," but did report finding "trends toward greater reductions in CHD risk . . .in those with lower intakes of saturated fat or trans fat," suggesting that total fat intake is not a big predictor is heart disease risk, but that intakes of sat and trans fats specifically might be related to heart disease risk. So, you could interpret this to mean that total fat is not an important predictor of heart disease risk, but that sat and trans fats might be related to heart disease risk, and are sort of in the same boat as "bad" fats, but even in their cases, in one of the largest and best-controlled epidemiologic studies ever conducted, the relationships are relatively weak. Howard et al, 2006. Low-Fat Dietary Pattern and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: The Women's Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Dietary Modification Trial. Journal of the American Medical Association 295:655-666.

Right, and there is also a mountain of evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease, and sat fat happens to constitute a much higher proportion of our fat intake than does transfats. So, shouldn't we ban butter in favor of trans-fat-free shortening? ← It's not that black and white. Saturated fats are a natural part of the human diet, as they have been for millenia, ← Well, for that matter, so have trans-fats. In fact, about 1/4 of the average person's trans-fat consumption comes from animal products, where it is formed by the microbial hydrogenation. Butter, for instance, has a good bit of all-natural trans-fat. And in any event, the food police rationale for limiting saturated fat would not be that saturated fat is unsafe in any quantities and therefore should be eliminated from the diet, but rather that a large proportion of people are consuming too much of it, and therefore its use should be minimized. Did you mean to include the word "don't" in that sentence? I will assume not, since 1) as the sentence stands it doesnt support your position, and 2) in the next sentence you say that the French "also" don't have high rates of heart disease, and 3) since the Inuit are often described as having low incidence of cardiovascular disease despite consuming large amounts of saturated fat. I researched this a few years back in the context of Atkins-type dieting, and found that there is really a lack of evidence on this point. For instance, Bjerregaard et al (2003), in their review of mortality statistics of Inuit in Greenland, Canada, and Alaska found that "the mortality from all cardiovascular diseases combined is not lower among the Inuit than in white comparison populations." Furthermore, they report that mortality from stroke is actually higher in the Inuit than in comparison populations. If you have recent, high quality mortality statistic that contradict this, I'd love to see them. Bjerregaard et al, 2003. Low incidence of cardiovascular disease among the Inuit--what is the evidence? Atherosclerosis. 166(2):351-7. It is true that the French have a relatively high intake of saturated fat and a relatively low rate of heart disease, and this has been recognized for many years as being something of a paradox. However, if you look at a large group of countries and compare them by sat fat intake and heart disease, as Artaud-Wild et al (1993) did, you see that France is interesting because it is the exception to this rule. Artaud-Wild et al examined 40 countries, comparing the death rates from heart disease and the intake of cholesterol and sat fat. There results show an obvious and remarkable relationship between the two, with higher cholesterol/sat fat intake being positively related to heart disease mortality (r value=0.78). Only two of the forty countries, France and Finland, are obvious outliers. The rest cluster remarkably close to the expected values. The Artaud-Wild et al paper is not available online, but you can see the graph reprinted in Ferrières (2004), figure 1. So the French paradox need not be seen as evidence against the hypothesis that high saturated fat intake increases the risk of heart disease, but possibly as evidence that some other factor unique to France moderates the effect of fat consumption on heart disease risk. All in all, I think the evidence is pretty inconclusive either way. Artaud-Wild et al, 1993. Differences in coronary mortality can be explained by differences in cholesterol and saturated fat intakes in 40 countries but not in France and Finland. A paradox. Circulation 88:2771–9. Ferrières, 2004. The French paradox: lessons for other countries. Heart 90:107-111. The above statement would appear to be incorrect. In fact, though the rate of heart disease is increasing in China, it is currently very low, only a fraction of what it is in the US. In fact, it apepars to be lower in China than in France, which you cite above as a country haivng a low rate of heart disease. According to the WHO's MONICA program, which monitors coronary event rates in 38 populations in 21 countries, Beijing has the lowest event rate of all the populations studied (81 per 100,000 men per year; 35 per 100,000 women per year). This is actually quite a bit lower than the rate for Tolouse, France, also monitored by the MONICA program. Tunstall-Pedoe H, et al, 1994. Myocardial infarction and coronary deaths in the World Health Organization MONICA Project. Registration procedures, event rates, and case-fatality rates in 38 populations from 21 countries in four continents. : Circulation 90(1):583-612. As to why China's heart disease rate is increasing rapidly, there are at least a few reasons. First, China has adopted tobacco smoking at an amazing rate, and now has one of the highest prevalences of tobacco smoking in the world, 60% in adult men, and tobacco smoking is probably the single biggest preventable risk factor for heart disease. That one factor, all by itself and without even considering anything else, predicts a high prevalence of heart disease in China. According to this table on smoking prevalence by country, China is #2 in smoking prevalence out of 46 countries for which there are available data. Moreover, epidemiological studies of various chinese populations show that in fact it is those consuming greater amounts of saturated fat (e.g. Chinese Singaporean) which have higher rates of heart disease, which again is consistent with the hypothesis that greater sat fat intake predicts greater heart disease risk. For instance, Dwyer et al (2003) found that Chinese Singaporeans have about twice the rate of heart disease mortality of the Chinese in Hong Kong and mainland China, and after examing several risk factor profiles in these locales, concluded that "although there was little difference in total fat intake, a higher consumption of dietary saturated fat and lower consumption of polyunsaturated fat, accompanied by higher serum cholesterol, appear to explain the relatively high CHD mortality in Singapore compared with Hong Kong and mainland China." Dwyer et al, 2003. The emergence of coronary heart disease in populations of Chinese descent. Atherosclerosis 167, pp. 303-310 Obviously "redeeeming qualities" will be in the eye of the beholder, and in the case of trans-fats, there are in fact those who would argue that there are redeeming values. For instance, Cook's Illustrated compared the newer trans-free shortening to the older version and found that, while the differences were subtle, there were texture differences favoring the trans version in some of the tests. Whether or not you or I disagree with that should be, I think, immaterial -- if a chef thinks his pastry is just a little more flaky with some trans-fat shortening added in, I think he should be able to use it. And to return to the slippery slope, you could certainly find plenty of nutritionists that would argue that a Hardee's burger with 1400calories and 107g of fat, or plate of alfredo with 100g of fat, or a serving of creme brulee with 50g of fat have "no redeeeming qualities whatsoever." I would disagree with that -- they have, for many people, the redeeming quality of being pleasurable to eat!- but the chef who might want to use a little trans shortening obviously could make the very same argument.