After accompanying programmatic interventions to facilitate
the switch were put in place and deadlines pushed back at industry
request, the rule quickly met targets (Angell et al., 2012). The ability
to isolate trans-fats accounts for a large part of policy selection
and success:
‘‘We recognized that trans-fats weren’t contributing to the obesity
problem. They were a nutritional problem – probably not
the biggest nutritional problem in America, but they were one
that you could isolate off because it was an artificial chemical
that shouldn’t have been in the food supply in the first place
and we could just ban it. You couldn’t do that with saturated
fats. You couldn’t do that with sugar.”
[Interviewee 1, DOHMH]
Similarly, with regard to the proposal to limit sugary drinks portion
size to 16 oz (0.5 l), interviewees pointed to the ease with
which sugar-sweetened beverages could be isolated given their
lack of nutritional value and major calorie contribution: