John:
If the answer to your question is no, doesn’t that counsel against the notion that consumers will be able to make informed choices about what they’re ingesting without government oversight and regulation?
I actually doubt that this is strictly possible. The price of different kinds of oils varies with agricultural and chemical prices. Restaurants may use canola oil one week and safflower oil the next depending on their prices.
Try reading the ingredients on a piece of processed food. When the label says "may contain nuts, soybeans, sunflower, " etc, it is not because the peanut vat fell on your Almond Joys, but because it could be processed with one of a myriad of of oils or combinations thereof. Likewise with restaurants. At this point, consumers may not find a label that says “may contain trans fats in unknown quantities” very informative.
The Bible sayth that?
Where doth the Bible sayth that, Brother Sal?
And, what doth it say about Pizza, and double lowfat cappuchino?
Oh, please…I’ve said all along in this thread that I believe that what the public needs is information and the right to make their own decisions.
True, that. However, you have yet to acknowledge that food labelling already does this, as evidenced in your many posts suggesting that you’ll never ever ever in the future history of the entire universe be allowed to eat trans fats again.
Why would I have to acknowledge that? It’s obvious that supermarket foods do include trans fats on the labels. But this thread is not about supermarket foods, it’s about restaurants and why they should be held to a different standard. I don’t believe they should be.
I’ll give it to you in the decent obscurity of a learned language: Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
It seems like a zillion years since I did basic chemistry, but if I recall correctly, there is no need for a ‘substitute’. All that is needed is for the industrial chemists running the hydrogenation plant to make some tweaks to the chemical process, resulting in a slightly runnier and lower-melting product with the exact same chemical formula. With vegetable oil, the differences should be trivial since it’s all runny anyhow - like sunflower oil versus canola oil, maybe. With stuff that you want to be solid, it might make a bit of a difference, about the same as that between goat butter and cow butter, but still far from catastrophic.
Or have I got all this wrong?
It’s informative enough. When you go to a bar that doesn’t allow smoking, you know that there will be NO smoke there. When you go to a bar that does allow smoking, you know that you are risking the possibility that there may be smoke. There may be none, if you hit a lucky night, or there may be a little or a lot, depending. But you know you are taking that risk. Why couldn’t a restaurant do the same thing with trans fats? If the restaurants don’t use them at all, they could advertise that fact, which may or may not be a selling point for them. If they do use them, they could be required to alert the customer that they use them, and that they eat there at their own risk that the dishes they eat may contain them.
Fair enough.
But please explain why you are complaining about not ever being able to eat trans fats again, when by your own admission you never frequent NYC restaurants.
I think you have. Biscuits are an excellent example of a product that needs a solid fat with a high smoke point to turn out well. There are only 2 products I know of that fit into that category: partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, and lard. My understanding is that the 0-trans shortening performs more like liquid oil when kneading the dough, but I can’t say for sure.
Please show me where I 1) complained about not ever being able to eat trans fats again, and 2) where I said that I never frequent NYC restaurants? If you are going to refute my arguments, please refute those that I am actually making.
Not that either of these points matter, because they are have nothing to do with my argument. The Chicago city council is also considering a ban on trans fats, so locally, I have a concern. But, really, my objection is not personal, as in, “Oh my gosh, they are taking MY trans fats away! What will I do without them!” It is a principle, reiterated over and over by me and others in this thread, that it is NOT the job of lawmakers to decide what ingredients the public should be allowed to consume, whether at home, in a restaurant, or wherever.
I am especially troubled by the idea that city councils are making these kinds of laws. Based on what I have observed about the Chicago city council, I would estimate that everyone participating in this discussion right now is AT LEAST as capable of assessing risk and making a decision (given the necessary information) than the council members are (probably more so). Why should THEY be making these decisions for me or for anyone? Maybe they should worry about themselves, and let me worry about myself.
This is what I have heard as well…I have been meaning to try the no-trans shortening, to see how it does, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
One of my concerns with all of this (and, yes, I am well aware that I can still get plain ol’ trans-fat Crisco in the grocery store!) is that one of my hobbies is baking. I don’t know much about other kinds of cooking, but in baking, the consistency of the fat is extremely important. Someone upthread mentioned that Crisco in cookies is kind of yucky. I do agree that you need butter for flavor, but some recipies are improved texture-wise by substituting 1/2 the butter with Crisco (the cookies don’t spread as much, etc.) I am not as experienced with biscuits and pie crust, but solid fats are definitely required, and butter will not work for everything. If the solid fat becomes liquidy to easily, it causes problems with the flakiness of the dough…so many bakers prefer to work with solid shortening instead, or as a partial substitute.
But we’ve already experienced this regulation-free dystopia, and rejected it. It’s called the 19th century. The slippery slope cuts both ways, people forget. If you’re not going to ban transfats because legislators have no business telling people what they should eat, then maybe they shouldn’t ban anything.
Someone mentioned lead upthread. Interestingly enough, lead use to be a food additive – until regulation stopped it. Are we now going to argue that lead should be allowed as a food ingredient, so long as there’s a warning label someplace?
Perhaps. But if the answer is “no”, then the government isn’t able to make informed choices for us either.
You said " Should I be disallowed from eating those, as well, ‘for my own good?’" That’s pretty far from what I accused you of, so I must have conflated your posts with someone else’s. Sorry about that. I’m a little hungry – how is the crow prepared?
What would happen if you used TF-F that was well-chilled? Would that work?
While I’m pretty much for the ban overall, I do have to wonder how bakeries are going to fare. They might be the collective straw that breaks the camel’s back.
It looks like this particular hill has slippery slopes on both sides! 
Aha. I know nothing of the biscuit baking business, but it looks like five years ago they were investigating mango kernel and mahua fats 
weird stuff. I’m sure those whacky scientists will brew up something that makes an acceptable substitute.
Maybe they shouldn’t. But I think there’s a big difference, as has been pointed out numerous times in this thread, between an obvious poison which can literally kill someone shortly after ingesting it, and that has no food value whatsoever, and trans fats, which does not fit this description at all.
Lead is such a bad comparison, I don’t know where to start. Lead is a POISON which should not be ingested due to the possibility of IMMINENT DEATH. Trans fats are NOT a poison, and there seem to be some benefits in terms of food quality which, it could be argued, some may want to take the slight risk of ingesting in order to enjoy that food. As I mentioned earlier, and others as well, some have dietary restrictions due to other, non-health-related issues, such as religious or ethical beliefs. They may not have a good alternative for some foods other than using trans fats. Are you saying that these folks should NOT be allowed to decide whether they want to run a small risk of harming their health or whether they want to violate these religious or ethical standards that they hold?
Surely the government (as with any institution) has the capacity to have better-synthesized, and more up-to-date information at its fingertips than we do.