«
»

No transfats for you!

Posted 05 Dec 2006 in healthcare

Well, hello, Big Brother!

New York City’s Board of Health has decided to ban transfats. Nevermind choosing what’s good for you. We’ll decide what you can and can’t eat. Go on now, children. Go back to playing, let Big Brother tell you what you can have.

The Board of Health voted Tuesday to make New York the first city in the nation to ban artificial trans fats at restaurants _ from the corner pizzeria to high-end bakeries.

The board, which passed the ban by a unanimous vote, did give restaurants a slight break by relaxing what had been considered a tight deadline for compliance. Restaurants will be barred from using most frying oils containing artificial trans fats by July 1, and will have to eliminate the artificial trans fats from all of its foods by July 1, 2008.

Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said recently that officials seriously weighed complaints from the restaurant industry, which argued that it was unrealistic to give them six months to replace cooking oils and shortening and 18 months to phase out the ingredients altogether.

Trans fats are believed to be harmful because they contribute to heart disease by raising bad cholesterol and lowering good cholesterol at the same time. Some experts say that makes trans fats worse than saturated fat.

This is beyond ridiculous. Eating too much fatty food is bad, period. Cooking it in transfat-laden oil or non-transfat oil is almost academic. It’s FAT!! If you eat too much fatty food, you’re gonna become fat and have health problems. Mandating which oils can be used by restaurants is not going to cause a surge in the health of New Yorkers. More government is NOT the answer, people.

Pam has a more sensible solution:

A possible alternative might have been to require restaurants and other eateries to label foods that are prepared with trans fats so that patrons could decide if they wanted to eat a particular item or not. Business owners usually get the idea pretty quickly if something they’re selling is not popular and why, and take the necessary steps to fix the problem.

But see, that would require common sense and a respect for the intelligence of the average citizen, something that is obviously beyond the capacity of NY’s bureaucracy.

Soylent Green, anyone?

Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT

Leave A Comment