The State steps in all the time to tell Citizens how to live For Their Own Good. This is why we have OSHA, FDA, etc etc etc. Should businesses be able to put whatever they want in food merely because they want to? If it’s shown that trans-fats are a significant risk factor for heart disease (and maybe the research isn’t adequate, I’m not going to pass judgement on that), then why would restricting its use be any different than restricting any other major toxin or dangerous substance?
It seems that every time the gov’t wants to restrict something for the sake of people’s health/safety, there are those who see it as the first step on the road to a fascist state.
Well, it IS the first step on the road to a fascist state!
It is true the state steps in all the time to tell citizens how to live for their own good, and some of us think there should be a lot less of that. Maybe a compromise in this case would be a law requiring restaurants to INFORM their patrons that they use trans fats, and allow people to decide if they want to continue patronizing the restaurant?
There are plenty of alternatives to trans fats for deep frying, but what kinds of changes will this bring to baking?
Before Proctor & Gamble introduced Crisco in 1911, shortening was usually done with lard, bacon fat, poultry fat, or butter. When you take a look at the old “Crisco Cookbooks” that P&G distributed before the 1920’s, you’ll find conversion charts that explain the differences in “shortening power” between these different fats and how to adapt favorite recipes to the “healthier new vegetable shortening.”
I’ve sifted through a list of the news stories about this ban, and none of them offer alternatives, or say what exactly is being banned - they concentrate on industry reaction, “man-in-the-street” commentary, and preachy bullshit about how much healthier all the fat people in NYC are suddenly going to become.
Does the ban mean we’ll be getting rid of Butter Flavored Crisco in the sugar cookies in favor of real butter? Lard back in pie crusts? Beef tallow to cook french fries? Bacon fat in biscuits? Although these changes are IMHO delicious ones, how is this going to affect vegetarian places (and diners)?
I’m not sure what the objection is. The scientific evidence seems pretty compelling that transfats are bad for you. From the New England Journal of Medicine:
On the basis of the predicted changes in total and HDL cholesterol levels alone , a meaningful proportion of CHD events (3 to 6 percent) would be averted. However, we believe that this reduction is an underestimate, since trans fats may also influence the risk of CHD through other mechanisms, such as inflammatory or endothelial effects. On the basis of reported relations between trans fat intake and CHD events in prospective studies, which may account more satisfactorily for the total effects of trans fatty acids, 10 to 19 percent of CHD events in the United States could be averted by reducing the intake of trans fat. Thus, given the 1.2 million annual myocardial infarctions and deaths from CHD in the United States, near-elimination of industrially produced trans fats might avert between 72,000 (6 percent) and 228,000 (19 percent) CHD events each year."
Cite is here. Just because no one was yet proved that X number of heart attacks is caused by transfats is no reason to throw caution to the winds. Heart attacks are not the only endpoint, after all.
And as others have pointed out, it’s not like transfats don’t have readily available, cost-effective substitutes.
How does this situation have anything to do with telling people how to live? It’s my understanding that artificial trans fats don’t affect the taste of food whatsoever – hydrogenation is merely a processing step that makes the fats cheaper. How does regulating product and food safety affect your lifestyle as a citizen?
I don’t think it’s a problem. Once trans fats started being linked to obesity and heart disease, Crisco quickly came out with a trans fat free shortening which is supposed to taste exactly the same. I’m guessing they just rolled back to a previous formula – Crisco has been making vegetable shortening well before partial hydrogenation.
Thanks. I was unaware that Crisco was available in a trans-fat-free version - and I see from the link you provided it’s been available for 2 years. Duh on me.
Telling me that I can’t eat a particular type of food because it is unhealthy for me IS telling me how to live. You may believe that it is telling me to do the RIGHT thing, which it may or may not be, but it is still telling me how to live. Why should I not be able to decide if I want to take the risk of eating these types of foods?
And by the way, the study in this cite was not looking at transfats particularly, rather at overall fat consumption. Even at that, the study says, “Trends toward greater reductions in CHD risk were observed in those with lower intakes of saturated fat or trans fat or higher intakes of vegetables/fruits.”
There’s the rub. If restaurants in NYC now have to use more expensive frying shortening, who’s going to pay for that? Certainly not the restaurant. People who are worried about the health effects of trans fats can go to places which don’t use them or cook at home. People who want to save a buck while eating on the run, on the other hand, would like the choice to do so. Taste is not the only reason people select a specific place to eat.
Do you want to eat hydrogenated vegetable oils? If so, why?
Similarly, are you also upset that the government tells you you can’t drink water with a certain amount of lead in it, or buy a house with a high risk of collapsing, or buy a car which might randomly explode?
NYC’s ban is not telling you that you cannot eat a particular food. It is telling restaurants that they cannot make their food with certain ingredients. Twinkies have not been banned. Partially hydrogenated Crisco will still be sold.
I’m not dismissing the potential slippery slope - today, the restaurants; tomorrow, the supermarket aisles. I just don’t see that happening (yet).
Hydrogenated vegetable oils only started being widely used in the 90’s. Before that, restaurants and fast food places somehow still managed to make and sell food at a profit. I’m guessing food prices won’t skyrocket after trans fats stop being used any more than they plummeted when trans fats were first introduced.
Except “you,” being the public at large (including myself), tends to be uninformed, misinformed, or just plain stupid. If you want to take the risk of, say, buying hats made with mercury, then hey, go ahead. Except that there are probably people who, if it were a little cheaper, would buy mercury hats, because they didn’t believe the hype, didn’t understand it, or just plain didn’t care.
Maybe you believe that dangerous chemicals/additives/materials should be available freely, and that the market should decide what ‘risks’ the public is willing to take and what risks it’s not willing to take, in which case we just have a differing basic philosophy, ya libertarian!!!
I, though, don’t trust the general public’s (or my own) knowledge and sense of judgment to be able to make good decisions about my health all the time. Decyphering truth from marketing propaganda created by those with vested interests in various products is not an easy thing.
Joe Citizen is probably not going to change his eating habbits because of information about the connection between heart disease and trans-fats. He’s probably not going to stop going to his favorite restaurant because it uses trans-fats in food preparation. Because of this (the fact that people will tend to be self-destructive because of habbit, momentum, or as a way to stick it to the man), it makes sense to me that the gov’t would force restaurants to stop using it. They certainly won’t otherwise, because this new information will most likely not change the number of customers they’ll get.
I can still buy trans-fats at the grocery store if I want it specifically, but the restaurant ban means that when I go to a place where I’m going to order the same food whether or not trans-fat was used in its preparation, I will be getting food that is significantly less likely to cause me to have a heart attack down the road.
Hydrogenation also makes fats more stable (giving them and foods made from them a longer shelf life) and allows you to control the consistancy and texture of the fats, making them easier to use in industrial food processing.
This is hardly the first incidence of an existing food product being deemed unhealthy and removed from consumption. Relating this to “fascism” is like comparing Woody Allen to Ted Bundy.
I think the question has to be: How dangerous does something need to be for the government to ban it? Obviously different people are going to have different thresholds as to what is acceptable interference by the state and what is not.
So, all those in favor of banning trans fats: How does the dangers posed by this substance compare to the danger posed by other substances, and what can we expect to be banned next? I assume that trans fats aren’t the most dangerous food additive out there, so why did we pick this one out of the many others that could or should be banned? Why ban it only in restaurants if it’s so bad for us? Is there a plan for banning it in other places as well? The “slippery slope” argument is a logical fallacy most of the time, but if you can demostrate that such a slope actually exists, then it is not. I think this is one case when it is not.
Let’s not get into comparisons with actual poisons, like arsenic or lead, because we know that exposure to a certain amount of those substances will lead to physcial problems, if not death. Trans fats fall into a different category because they are risk factors (trans fats being one of many) to health problems, not something that can be causally tied to a specific health problem in a specific individual.
