Rand Paul Says FDA Wants to Take Away Your Doughnuts, FDA Disagrees

From my cold, dead hands.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/91252560@N00/4066872653">Lindsey Turner</a>/Flickr

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“They’re coming after your doughnuts!” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told a roomful of conservatives in South Carolina Monday, accusing the Food and Drug Administration of launching a campaign of doughnut obliteration. “Did you hear they’re coming after the trans fat in your doughnuts?” he continued. The senator was referring the FDA’s decision last week to have the food industry phase out trans fats.

“I say we need to line every one of them up,” he said at the Charleston Meeting, an invite-only gathering. “I want to see how skinny or how fat the FDA agents are that are making the rules on this…’Cause if we’re going to have a nanny state, and everybody’s got to eat the right thing, and you can’t eat a doughnut, maybe we ought to just enforce it on the government workers first.”

His comments on the tyrannically anti-doughnut FDA were met with laughter and applause from the audience. The lines worked for the crowd, but in the real world, the FDA is not coming after any American’s treasured doughnut. (Trans fats aren’t even required in the doughnut-making process.) FDA spokeswoman Theresa Eisenman sent Mother Jones the following statement on Tuesday:

Consumption of artificial trans fat, a man-made, not naturally occurring substance, increases the risk of coronary heart disease. In recent years, many food manufacturers and retailers have voluntarily decreased trans fat levels in many foods and products they sell. Trans fat can be found in some processed foods, such as certain desserts, microwave popcorn products, frozen pizzas, margarines and coffee creamers. Numerous retailers and manufacturers have already demonstrated, however, that many of these products can be made without trans fat.

And as New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait noted, Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, and others already eliminated trans fat from their product, and consumers don’t taste the difference. “FDA officials are phasing out a dangerous substance at no cost to people’s ability to eat tasty food,” Chait concluded.

Chalk the FDA’s War on the American Doughnut up to the list of bizarre and incorrect things that Rand Paul says he believes.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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