This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, November 27th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The shelf life of many foods will get shorter with the FDA's plan too, as it says, phase out the use of trans fats in the United States.

Bailin Linnekin is the executive director of Keep Food Legal.

He says the FDA's assertion that there are quote no safe levels of

consumption of trans fats as broad

implications for a lot of what we eat.

Essentially the FDA is proposing to ban artificial trans fats which are fats made with partially hydrogenated

vegetable oil and trans fats have been around since animals have been around ruminant animals like cows,

produce them naturally, and so they're in dairy products

and in meat.

And we consume them, you know, people who eat those products

eat them on a regular basis. The artificial

variety of the FDA is proposing to phase out because they claim that they're somehow

particularly nefarious fats.

I'm obviously, you know, I'm not a scientist, I'm a lawyer.

I think there are lots of good foods that people like to eat that have them and obviously the choice should be there.

One issue with respect to trans fats is that they don't break down as quickly as other fats do.

So mono unsunsaturated fats break down fairly quickly.

That kind of oil will go rancid more quickly than something that was that was

made with trans fats. What difference does that make?

Well, it's a shelf life question.

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