“Trans fat causes heart disease. Like lead in paint, artificial trans fat in food is invisible and dangerous, and it can be replaced,” Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said in a statement….”While it may take some effort, restaurants can replace trans fat without changing the taste or cost of food. No one will miss it when it’s gone.”
Over the last couple of days, I’ve made a lot of noise about supporting smoking bans in public spaces. It’s a good idea, and these efforts should be strengthened. After all, protecting public health is and should be a primary role of government. I also think that New York City’s proposed ban on trans fats is a good thing, but even I have to wonder if we’re not headed down a slippery slope here. So where does this crazy train stop…or does it?
Banning smoking in public spaces makes sense for the simple reason that second-hand smoke doesn’t respect boundaries. Since it’s beginning to be widely recognized as a significant health threat, banning smoking in public spaces as a way to reduce second-hand smoke is a sensible way to reduce the risk it poses to nonsmokers.
Trans fats, though, present, a whole different set of issues. In the case of trans fats, while there is no second-hand exposure issue, consumers often don’t know (or care) that they are ingesting trans fats. SInce restaurant foods don’t come with an ingredient list, there is no way for a consumer to know if trans fats are on the menu. Given the acknowledged and significant risks to heart health posed by trans fats, it makes sense to look for alternatives.
While I agree with the goal of the proposed ban, I can’t help but wonder about the enforcement effort behind it. Not only that, if trans fats are made illegal, then what will be next? Where DO we draw the line? I wish I had an answer to that question.
Where some will see the creeping influence of the “nanny state”, I see a good idea that has the distinct and very real potential of ballooning into something completely out of control. Today, trans fats. Tomorrow…white flour and refined sugar? Yes, government does have a responsibility to protect public health…but to what extent? I’m not necessarily into logical extremes, but could we one day have anything we want, as long as it’s oatmeal, broccoli, and whole-grain bread? Stay tuned….
I work in public health. Don't count on the broccoli and whole-grain bread. Fresh vegetables? Um, yeah -- right now there are about 200 people very ill from eating raw spinach. (Which is one of my favorite indulgences: spinach leaves julienned, tossed in a raspberry vinaigrette and splayed on a plate with fresh tomatoes, toasted walnuts, and a little crumbled blue cheese). There are several more who ingested improperly-kept carrot juice and still others who got sick drinking unpasteurized milk.
So damn near anything's a gamble in this industrial-quantity world.
Wanna trust your food? Grow your own. Use organic methods in windowboxes or your backyard. If the improvement in taste doesn't knock your socks off (and if it doesn't your tastebuds have paid too many visits to the Golden Arches) the extra exercise you get and the fun involved probably will.
Seriously, though, oatmeal is good for you. It can actually remove cholesterol from your system. You can get it cheaply, and if you fix it using apple juice instead of water and a little pumpkin pie spice instead of butter, you won't know you're not eating dessert.
Another example of the "progressives" and their social engineering.
I'm just *sure* that we can all grow enough food in windowboxes to feed ourselves.
Look. The reason we are all stuck with an industrial world, including industrial food, is precisely because humanity has spawned too many people to feed (house, clothe, etc) by organic means. If we're going to do the ostrich thing and go into denial, pretending those six billion people aren't out there needing to be fed by industry, pretending that you yourself won't want to eat during the months when nothing grows in your windowbox, and pretending that you don't ever need water, transportation, heat, industrial shingles over your head, medicines, etc etc, then we don't even deserve the rotten, industrial world we do have.
Making the best of our overcrowded global situation is the best choice of the bad ones available to us. (It might help if religious fanatics of every stripe stopped kicking the crap out of each other and left the rest of us alone.) But unfortunately, with this trans fats thing, NYC has followed Chicago down another "let's-pretend" dead end. It's like the people who burn a gallon of petroleum to recycle half an ounce of plastic grocery bags. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, so long as you've turned off your brain. And with trans fats there is the liberty thing, which Jack correctly points out doesn't so much arise in the public smoking subject.
While I was responding to Jack's
"Comments on Tune in next week, when I'll piss off my four remaining readers" post, I tried to think of an absurd example and came up with government regulation of fat intake. So, it would seem that once again the progressives have exceeded my wildest expectations in the absurdity department.
It's one thing to force the food industry to provide ingredient and nutrition information. When you start dictating what they can and can't use, it quite another.
What will the nanny staters come up with next -- A ban on fast food restraunts in low income neighborhoods?
Alcohol? Check.
Marijunaa? Check.
Tobacco? Check.
Fat? Check.
Fun? Pending.
Rush was right. It all started with tobacco.
Today, trans fats. Tomorrow, meat. This is just the start of the rise of the satanic New World Order where veganism will be the law of the land, and straying from the NWO-mandated vegan diet will be a capital offense (meaning you will be put to death).
There's a series of Sonic Drive-In commercials that show people sitting in cars that are parked there and turned off. (The guy's wife is kinda cute but reminds me of my X.)
Have you ever noticed that the people in the commercial are wearing their seat belts?
This strikes me as odd. I suppose it could be an artistic or persuasional device that I don't understand, but wonder if Sonic or their agency fears that they might be exposed civilly if they associated their product with people behaving in such an unsafe manner. by not using their seat belts.
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