Today's Gather Poll was, "Do you agree with the ruling in New York to ban all trans-fats in restaurants?" For the 49 percent of respondents who answered, "Yes," I have a suggestion: Get real...
...but don't get me wrong. The evidence so far seems fairly good that trans-fats are bad for you. Don’t eat them on a regular basis.
Nevertheless, this ban will have no impact on anyone's life. If you’re frequently eating out in restaurants that don't already use real butter, olive oil, lard, and other natural lipids then you’re almost certainly already overloading your system with man-made ingredients and additives that your body hasn't evolved to deal with.
Some of these may be safe, others not. It's a crapshoot -- and if you followed the introduction a couple of years ago of indigestible fats for frying chips then you may recall the warnings about "anal leakage" and know such ingredients may be a literal crap shoot.
And if you’re like me, and only occasionally buy a meal at a fake food joint, then you don’t have anything to worry about from the trans-fats or any of the ordinary fats and sugars such meals are loaded with.
Furthermore, the law does nothing to address cookies, bread, candy, crackers, salad dressing, tomato sauce, pancake mix, or any of the other thousands of foods you can buy at the grocery store or in vending machines that incorporate trans-fats.
The solution isn't a national ban on trans-fats. The solution is education. If NYC wants to help people, they should require any establishment selling food -- whether Burger King or Safeway -- to post warnings that some food items may include trans-fats and that the current evidence is that these fats are bad for you. We haven’t banned smoking, but everyone knows its bad for them and smoking has declined significantly since we began educating people about it -- even though a few die-hards, like me, continue to smoke.
Education has also reduced alcohol consumption far more effectively than prohibition ever did.
For what it's worth, I've used the non-trans-fat Crisco in a pie crust and it doesn't make as good a pastry as the hydrogenised product. And neither can touch lard for flavor or flakiness in a savory pie.
When someone tells you, "This is for your own good," you know you’re in trouble. Don't let anyone take your right to decide away from you.
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Comments: 38
Is your comment an agreement with my final assertion or a despute with my thesis?
Lard is a necessity for some ethnic foods in my mind.
I'm completely pro-labeling. Full disclosure in a commercial product is a good thing. Always and almost absolutely. Not that I always read labels carefully -- in general if they list more than four ingredients I put them back on the shelf, but that shortcut works for me.
The trans-fat issue isn't about obesity, but about eating something that may be, literally, poisonous. Nevertheless, you're exactly right about the importance of portion control and variety -- not that I'm a stickler for portion control.{wry grin}
Which, of course, is why they don't. It's another example of the foie gras bans -- pandering to perceptions rather than realities. Were I given a choice, I'd go for the duck's force-feeding regimen and open air rather than the average chicken's psuedo-life in a tiny box eating the remains of it's dead sisters and it's own feces.
"I ignore every ingredient on the list for my favorite candy bar!"
Then we're in complete harmony.
I buy very few processed foods and most of them are canned tomatoes or forzen peas, or similarly preserved vegetables. In fact, I'm doing more of my own meat processing because things like sausage and bacon are the most heavily processed foods I buy and I'd prefer more control.
Candy,
Absolutely. I think I have an absolute right under our constitution to protect myself -- and if that means requiring food processors to make their processes transparent then sobeit. However, I don't want to be protected from myself. I also have a right to be foolish so long as no one else is directly harmed.
If the law said that we couldn't take our children to restaurants that served transfats, I suspect you could sell it under the same method of thinking as the ban on kiddie porn, child smoking, child drinking and mandated car seats. But the law goes further and says that an adult may not go into a restaurant and obtain foods prepared with transfats.
Of course, New Yorkers can still COOK with transfats and BUY foods made with transfats in the stores. Frankly, the NYC council has overstepped its bounds and will undoubtedly get its bottom smacked by the courts.
I'm so sick of government butting into the peoples private affairs.
In California they banned soda and vending machines from the schools 'in the better interest' of the kids and demanded a healthier school lunch program. The end result was kids carrying soft sided cooler packs to school loaded with sodas and goodies that they would sell to the other kids at inflated prices and 90% of the kids quit eating in the cafeteria because they were giving their lunch money to the snack food pirates.
I'm all for educational and preventative labeling but as for the rest of it the government needs to just butt out and back off.
Educating the population to health issues ( which by the way bounce back in forth to its good for you its bad for you ) is one thing. Dictating that policy is another. It gives the impression to the large majority that we as individuals are far to stupid to run our own lives in the way we see fit.
Regardless of how one chooses to do this it should be their choice, up to them, not up to our government or a panel of individuals who have appointed themselves our "guardians." That would to me be the meaning of words such as "freedom" and "liberty." Without the right to make those choices on our own it is in essence no longer a "free" country.
You make a valid point, nevertheless a local ban on trans-fats in restaurants accomplishes nothing. Period. It's pure political posturing and that's the harm. It's meddling to no purpose and I consider that an evil.
I have problems with moderation too.{g}
I absolutely am in agreement with you here.
I think we have a right to be informed because without information the free-market system doesn't work.
I think that information is often the simplest and most effective form of protection.
I think that when we begin protecting people from their own behavior we cross the line from benelovence to malevolence. I think we also cross that line when we penalize people for their behavior if it causes no general harm to society or others. Ultimately we all make mistakes and although I might avoid your stupid error I will certainly make my own, and perhaps one which you had enough sense to avoid. But the more we know, the fewer errors we'll make.
Kevin this is a well stated comment and so insidiously true. It just seeps into the system unrecognizable for what it is in the guise of better "whatever is the issue" for us.
It's a result of thinking in terms of finding solutions rather than understanding problems. This tendency is incredibly pernicious.
Solutions and answers are good in some ways and some situations. Other times they lend nothing of value to the situation at hand. (recent lesson learned *smile*) I fear for the future of my children as I see this country becoming more and more complacent to being controlled as opposed to educated and given free choice. I love this country but I am embarrassed by what it is becoming.
It's not just proteins, there are a number of nutrients (B-12 comes to mind) that we've evolved to extract from animal flesh.
Requiring labels to identify harmful ingredients so people realize what they are consuming is fine, but what people ingest is their own personal right.