RICHARD SEAH, founder of Stop Trans Fats, is a Singapore-based natural health advocate, teacher of macrobiotics, writer, journalist, photographic artist, web designer / builder, audiophile hifi dealer and more.

On his personal website, www.richardseah.com, he unabashedly descibes himself a man of "many interests, many talents.”

Richard's proudest achievement is that he has not consulted a doctor nor taken any pharmaceutical drug – not a single pain killer or antibiotic – for over 20 years, ever since he discovered natural health in 1985.

This is in sharp contrast to the first 30 years of his life, when he grew up weak and sickly, and was visiting the doctors and taking antibiotics and other drugs every two to four weeks.

A former journalist with The Business Times in Singapore, Richard Seah left the media in 1989 to self-publish a newsletter on natural health called The Good Life. He wrote and published 61 issues up till 1996.

In 1994, Richard Seah and two friends – John Yeo and Kheng Chua – founded (but have since sold, in 1999) Brown Rice Paradise, Singapore's first natural and organic foods store that sold only food, no vitamin pills.

Richard currently works as a free lance writer and web master for several healthcare professionals.

Richard Seah maintains a number of his own websites, including:

• www.richardseah.com
• www.stop-trans-fat.com
• www.natural-cancer-cures.com
• www.art-photograph-gallery.com
• www.divaaudio.com

With the help of an excellent web building / web marketing programme called SiteBuildIt, Richard Seah hopes to earn a good income by publishing websites that provide excellent content. Click here to learn more about the SiteBuildIt web business model, based on Content > Traffic > Presell > Monetize.

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Margarine and Trans fats

As a health researcher and writer, Richard Seah had always known that artificial foods such as margarine were not healthy but, in fact, harmful.

He recalls reading in Udo Erasmus' first book, Oils and Fats, a comparison of butter vs margarine in which Udo Erasmus awarded 1 point for every positive factor, and minus 1 point for every negative factor.

The final score for butter was between - 1 1/2 and - 3 1/2, depending on the quality while the final score for margarine was at least - 7 1/2. Click here to learn more about the butter versus margarine debate.

That was probably Richard Seah's introduction to the word trans fats. But for many years, if and when he did write or speak on the subject, his focus was more on the harm of margarine rather than on the wider topic of the dangers of trans fats.

Richard Seah also somehow knew that, in spite of all the bad things commonly said about coconut oil being high in saturated fat, it is not as harmful as it is made out to be.

This was confirmed to him by Sreemadhavan, his naturopath friend from Kerela, “the land of coconuts” in South India. Sreemadhavan told Richard Seah that the people in Kerela had low rates of heart disease in spite of eating, on average, the equivalent of two coconuts daily.

Despite these viewpoints, Richard Seah used to believe – like most healthcare professionals and lay people alike – that saturated fats were harmful.

He reckoned that products like coconut milk and coconut oil were harmful because people were eating them in addition to plenty of meat, eggs, milk, butter and cheese, which were all high in saturated fats. In other words, they were eating far too much saturated fats.

He felt that coconuts did not cause many health problems in places like South India because the people were generally poor and ate little meat. Thus, they did not consume saturated fats excessively.

This viewpoint took a dramatic turn at the end of 2004, when Richard Seah began reading more about the benefits of coconut oil. He came across the work of Dr Mary Enig, who presented much scientific evidence to prove that saturated fats were, in fact, beneficial.

Richard Seah says:

“My eyes sparkled when I read those articles. Even though I knew all along that margarine was harmful, it was the first time in nearly 20 years that I came across so much information that was new to me.”

“Many people are too closed minded to consider the possibility that saturated fats might be healthy. But I say, look at the scientific evidence. Look deeply. If you only look on the surface, you will see that saturated fats are harmful. When you look deeper, a totally different picture emerges.

“For the past 50 years, saturated fats have been taking the blame for problems caused by trans fats. It is time for consumers to be enlightened.”

When Richard Seah first learnt that the US was planning to introduce trans fat labelling, and that Denmark haad banned trans fats, he saw this initially as an opportunity to highlight the harm of margarine.

However, it soon became apparent to him that trans fat was the much bigger issue. Between November 2005 and December 2006, Richard got two major press commentaries on trans fats published, along with about 10 letters to Straits Times Forum page and the Voices section in Today newspaper.

Meanwhile, the Singapore government's adamant refusal to take any firm action against trans fat – no trans fat labelling, no ban on trans fats, not even any form of public education beyond putting up a page on trans fats on the Singapore Health Promotion Board website – made Richard Seah all the more determined to pursue the issue.

He writes:

“Indeed, it was my disappointment with the government's reluctance to take firmer action against trans fats that prompted him to start this new Stop Trans Fats campaign.

“For me, the last straw came on December 22, when the newspapers reported that the Singapore Health Promotion Board called a press conference where the Chairman of the Singapore Heart Foundation, Dr Low Lip Ping, described trans fats as ‘a small problem’. Dr Low further remarked that efforts in the US to curb trans fats were ‘a bit hysterical’.

“The Health Promotion Board made it very clear that it would not introduce trans fat labelling and that a trans fats ban was out of the question.

“That got me thinking. A week later, the idea of a ‘Stop Trans Fats’ campaign came to mind. And the idea got bigger, to include also ‘Stop MSG’, ‘Stop Aspartame’ and other ‘Stop’ campaigns. There are just so many harmful food substances that people do not know much about.

“Many health conscious people are so ill-informed that they literally take poisons every day. One of them was the stepfather of Stephen Joseph, the man who started BanTransFats.com in the US. Joseph's stepfather was considered health conscious, yet he developed diabetes and died from a heart attack. Joseph believes this was because his stepfather “ate margarine by the ton.”

Richard Seah registered this website on 29 December 2006 and, by January 1, posted seven pages of information. The site since grown considerably, with close to 30 pages at the time of writing this article, on 14 January 2006.

Richard Seah adds:

“Lots of issues concerning trans fats need to be discussed. When I write to the ST Forum, I am limited to 400 words. Yet 40,000 words may not be enough to discuss the issues fully.”