Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Trans fat/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 06:17, 31 January 2007.

[edit] Trans fat

In my opinion, this article is now comprehensive, sourced, reads well, and is stable. I have recently made a pass through the article to update references to current citation templates. This is my first FAC after many months of work on the article, and I'm ready to make changes as required to bring it up to spec. Self-nomination. -- cmh^TC 01:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comments. Per MOS, it needs an image at the top right of the article. Some of the sections in the lede could be combined - right now it looks like there are five paragraph, but it could be combined to two. More sources are needed, IMO. Nine entire paragraphs are missing sources. European Union and United Kingdom sections in Public response and regulation are stubby. Hurricanehink (talk) 02:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you for the feedback. I'm not sure that I see where in MOS it says the article needs an image at the top right. I'll work on the paragraphs as you suggest. As far as sources are concerned, my understanding is that citations are not required for statements easily verified by adults. Can you identify specific facts that require citation? I'll work on the public response sections. -- cmh^TC 13:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose

1. Sloppy paragraph structuring - many are single sentences (including the some in the lead)
2. The text of the lead all over the place the sections also seem oddly out of order history before chemistry etc;
3. US section of the response section is disproportionately long and risks degenerating into a list of places that have banned TF - oddly doesn't mention BanTransFats - who by my understanding initiated most of the early lawsuits that led to the removal of TF from oreos etc and led to major public awareness of the fat in the US;
4. Food industry response is entirely US-cenric - what about Europe and Asia - in Australia where labeling isn't required several fast food companies are removing trans fats anyway.
5. The article doesn't mention that so far there is no RDI for trans fats set by any government authority (worldwide as far as I know) - there is a long section about what the NAS recommends - again totally US-centric; what do other international scientific/health/researchers think?
6. A table showing countries where trans fat is a significant part of the diet would be an informative inclusion.
7. Finally the trans fat is not as simple as the article makes out - the article never mentions that there are good trans fats - like conjugated linoleic acid - trans fat is just a configuration - it really needs someone with some lipid chemistry knowledge to wok on this.

--Peta 03:01, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for your comments on the article. Some of the comments I agree with, and some I disagree with. I would appreciate some more of your thoughts on some of these points.

1. I'll work on this. My style does tend to run to short paragraphs, but I should be able to fix them up.
2. I'll respond to this below.
3. I agree that there are too many places discussed, Chicago should go as a redundant city. New York is obvious to stay, but what about Tiburon? BanTransFats was an advocacy group behind the Tiburon project and the Oreo lawsuit, both of which are discussed in the article. There is an external link to them as well. Do you think that BTF merit mention in the US public regulation section itself?
4. My thought was to only list companies who by their actions have advanced the trans fat debate itself, or who were sued, etc. Otherwise it was simply a list of grocery stores and food outlets. I'm not in the US, but it seems that those guys have really been the driving force on the corporate level. Do you have any suggestions for how to balance this section?
5. With respect, on this point I disagree. The NAS board is a scientific consensus board that does not represent a US view. Their assessment is used at least in Canada as well. The RDI is a construct of the NAS, and the article says there is no RDI and explains why. The section continues with WHO recommendations. I don't understand how all this can be a US-only perspective. In my view, the NAS, as a major scientific review document, is an ironclad source for statements that many would like to object to.
6. I'll look at this. My first reaction is that except for Denmark it is likely to include all countries with processed foods.
7. On this point I disagree entirely. I would claim references 3 and 10 as comprehensive, scientific review sources that are specific that neither animal-sourced trans nor plant-sourced trans have benefits. Source 3 states that it is less of a health concern, but this may be due to the lower intake levels. All this information is presented in the article (last paragraph of nutritional guidelines section). -- cmh^TC 13:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• Object this ought to be an article about a class of molecules that happen to be the subject of a nutritional and political controvery. As written, it's an article about a nutritional and political controversy that happens to have a chemistry section. The chemistry section should precede discussion of nutritional guidelines. The chemistry section is also overly simplistic and, as Peta says, needs to be edited by someone who is familiar with the subject. I'd also like to see the health risks section reviewed by someone who is conversant with the medical literature and capable of judging the reliability of individual studies - eg the 'one recent study' that linked trans fat to prostate cancer. The statement 'one recent study linked <class of compounds> to <medical symptom>' is almost never false, but not always relevant either. However, if I may object to a comment, there's nothing in the MOS that states 'all articles must have an image in the top right corner', nor is it an FA criterion, nor is it important at this point. Work on the layout after the content. Opabinia regalis 04:47, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for your remarks. I'm asking for more feedback about the structuring of the document below. I hesitated about leaving the prostate cancer reference, but it's all that's left of a huge blob of uncited crap on quack theories of what trans fat does. Honestly, I'd like to drop everything here except for the CHD section, do you think this makes sense? Regarding the chemistry section, I deliberately went for something that would be (I hoped) easy to understand for lay readers. Do you have any suggestions about keeping a balance between an article accessible to lay readers yet with enough detail? Perhaps my suggestion below would help? -- cmh^TC 13:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• Without having read anything from the actual studies, I'd support chopping the 'other effects' section. I don't know how reliable some of those individual studies are - Alzheimer's disease has successfully adopted a fairly strict standard on what types of studies merit inclusion in the article; maybe adopting a similar standard and evaluating the existing citations according to that would be helpful. Having an established inclusion criterion would also be useful for combatting the inevitable edit creep this article will suffer. Opabinia regalis 01:17, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Unless there's some reason to doubt the Chavarro et al study, it should be kept. It's important that people can find out what is backed by science and which are just assertions by quacks. Nunquam Dormio 21:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

• Just want to affirm what Opabinia said. The most logical layout of this article seems to be: Chemistry --> Presence in food --> Health risks --> Public reaction and nutritional guidelines. History could fit in a number of places -- perhaps break up the history section and distribute is among the other sections. Also agree that the article doesn't necessarily need an image at the top right, not sure where that is coming from. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment on Article Organization Thank you to the users who have brought up the organization. I gave this a lot of thought when doing the major re-organization and decided that most readers would be coming to the page to get basic information about trans fats and find out information about presence in food and health guidelines. The chemical information is important too, but in my view was something that fewer readers would want to consume. My concern is that if the chemistry section is moved to the front it will be too technical and will stop readers before they get to the everyday information about trans fats. I am still worried about this, particularly in view of the fact that it seems the depth of the chemistry section is insufficient.

One thought I have is that summary style could be used to break out a technical article on the chemistry (perhaps at Trans fatty acid) that could build on the information currently at Trans fat; the current article could then shorten its treatment of the topic but move it to the front to provide a better organization. Would there be support for this move? -- cmh^TC 13:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I think a split might be in order but I would put the chemistry information at trans fat with a redirect from trans fatty acid, and the newsy nutrition stuff at trans fats in nutrition or similar. Opabinia regalis 01:17, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

While I understand your concern, I think that readers will mostly be capable of skipping to the section they want to read if they have a focused interest. That's why there's a table of contents. Another organizational concern I noticed is that in the by-country listings, they are obviously organized alphabetically, but Canada's section mentions Denmark, which is discussed later. Perhaps a non-alphabetical structure would be superior. Christopher Parham (talk) 08:05, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose If the mechanisms contributing to CHD are well understood, you need to explain what these are. The article as a whole is seriously lacking in its coverage of the biochemistry of trans fats. The chemistry section does a good job in explaining what trans fats are, but there is no link between this information and the list of health effects. You need to cover how the body metabolises trans fats, how this differs from unsaturated and cis-unsaturated fats and how these differences cause disease. TimVickers 21:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.