05th Dec 2006
No More Fat
New York City’s Board of Health voted unanimously to ban trans fats from all foods in all restaurants by 1 July 2008.
Link, via BBC.
Thoughts?
this is how it works
05th Dec 2006
New York City’s Board of Health voted unanimously to ban trans fats from all foods in all restaurants by 1 July 2008.
Link, via BBC.
Thoughts?
Terrible idea! The beginning of a very dangerous and slippery slope. Any other outright ridiculous bans or suggestions thereof that supposedly are good for us? I have a few ideas:
- pot (it makes you stupid)
- sugar or substitutes (diabetes and/or cancer)
- cars (pollution)
- steaks and hamburgers (heart disease)
- alcohol (we tried that once but someone can always do it better)
- candy (rots your teeth)
- capitalism (it makes people rich; we should be like Cuba)
- cigarettes (it gives you cancer)
- walmart (it sells stuff too cheap)
- flautulence (contributes to global warming)
There is plenty of work left to do folks…why stop there?
This is an easy win and not some sort of gateway to fascism as Virgil seems to think. Replacing one fat for another will help people live longer, meaning more time with their families in their later years. There’s a lot of public support for this in New York, so it’s not like there’s people marching in the streets for their favorite type of fat.
It should also be pointed out that trans fat is not a naturally occurring substance, but is the result of the hydrogenation process, which is done to oils and liquidy, naturally occurring fats in order to make them solid at room temperature.
The main implication of this for restaurants is that they have to stop using margarine, and have to find a new frying oil. Many restaurants, including Taco Bell, McDonalds, and probably most other fast-food chains, use partially hydrogenated soybean oil in their fryers. It’s cheap, it ships easily (since it’s a solid at room temperature), and it’s terrible for you. Glad to see it go.
Guys, do not fall for the hype. Trans-fats are as bad for you as anything else that you and I would abuse and eat in great quantities. I oppose the ban on the principle of freedom and independence from government control. The FDA of all groups has a very fair and good article on transfats and the very revealing fact that saturated fats (which is in everything we eat) is actually more dangerous than transfats and most foods contain up to 3 times as much saturated fats, yet nobody is proposing banning saturated fats. Why not?
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2003/503_fats.html
You get your facts on fat from the very government you fear impinges on your independence?
Fats in general are unhealthy. While your body needs roughly 7% of it’s calories to come from fat, a typical American easily tops 30% or more resulting in heart disease numbers that are pretty awful. Trans fat’s difference in impact is it’s effect on “good” vs. “bad” cholesterol. There is a difference and it’s not one people can taste, so I doubt any consumer will care, but it will impact their health.
As a New Yorker, I’m more than pleased that the city council pushed this through. The city government didn’t impose this on us. It’s a representative democracy and it’s what we wanted. I support just as I do fluoride in the water. It’s an easy thing to do with a tangible impact.
McDonald’s, to their credit, removed trans-fat long ago from their ingredients. The said, their food is still unhealthy crap.
It’s not the job of governments to determine what I should and should not eat, and what restaurants can and cannot use in their ingredients. It’s a silly law that assumes people are too stupid to make their own decisions and cannot be effectively enforced.
It’s perfectly easy for a person to avoid trans fats without having a law passed against them. The consumer should just do his/her homework. Now, if restaurants are deliberately making it difficult for consumers to find out what’s in the food the restaurants are making — especially fats — then perhaps the government can require restaurants to disclose that information more clearly, ala nutritional info sidebars on groceries. But when governments start making the public’s health choices for them, the government has overstepped.
I dislike trans fats as much as anybody. That’s why *I don’t eat foods that are made with them*. It’s a choice that I make for me and my family based on sound information. I don’t need a government to be my nanny. Don’t they have something else better to do?
Note to my previous comment: “But when governments start making the public’s health choices for them, the government has overstepped.”.
I wanted to point out that if there is a significant public health problem that is NOT linked to individual choice, then I think a case can be made for a law. The main example I’m thinking of is secondhand smoke in a public place (like a restaurant). And of course large-scale public health risks like E. coli outbreaks are within the purview of the government. But individual nutritional choices are definitely are best left up to the individual consumer.
Robert-
I think a significant aspect of this public health issue is that it is very difficult to tell what kind of fats are in restaurant food. While in principle it may be possible to find out, it’s a hassle to ask your server, who has to ask someone else, who may not even know, for every item on the menu that you’re thinking about ordering.
The bottom line is that hardly anyone knows exactly what they’re eating at a restaurant. I avoid Taco Bell’s fried items because I know they use trans fats, but that’s because I worked there when I was in college.
Most people cannot be expected to take this level of caution in their food choices – especially the people that are most at risk of becoming obese or having a heart attack. People simply don’t think about it enough, and the current public health crisis with obesity should show us that we can’t simply wait for people to become informed and thoughtful.
There is a tremendous lack of transparency in the restaurant industry as far as ingredients are concerned. Many people have proposed labeling, but I’d bet it will be cheaper and easier to switch to non-trans fats than it would be to put warnings in all the menus in all 20,000+ NYC restaurants.
The Times has hundreds of comments from New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers here. I’d say the comments are 60/40 in favor of the ban, but I didn’t read all of them, and those opposed tended to weigh in later in the discussion.
Trans fats last longer in a fryer than natural fats, so they are cheaper for restaurants. However, that’s the only reason to use them – there is absolutely no taste or health reason. Since it’s in the food industry’s best interests to use trans fats, and in everyone else’s best interests to ban them, I’d say this is an appropriate use of government power – to force the bad guy to do what’s right for everyone.
Virgil-
Yes, saturated fats are also bad for you, but this is not an issue of trans fats vs. saturated fats. Trans fats will be replaced with unsaturated, non-trans fats, not saturated fats. These fats are more healthy, not less.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat
Since trans fats do occur naturally in small quantities in any meat, and since heating any oil changes some of those bonds from cis- to trans-, the ban is ridiculous. I agree that restaurants should not start with trans-fats, but eventually, that fryer will have trans-fats in it.
So to effectively ban trans- fats, really and truly all the restaurants in the city must become vegetarian.
I’d be curious to see if the people who posted here would find this to be government oppression?
Ian-
What quantities are we talking about? The Wikipedia article doesn’t say, and that’s pretty important information.
Who says heating an oil turns its cis fats into trans fats? Yes, the trans conformation may be more stable, but that assumes the oil gets hot enough to overcome the activation energy threshhold.
Activation energy is the amount of energy required for a chemical reaction – even one that results in a more stable compound – to occur. It’s like pushing over a chair – the chair may be more stable lying on its back than standing up, but you have to push it hard enough to make it fall over. If you don’t push it hard enough, it’ll remain standing up.
I’ve never heard of fats changing conformation simply from being used in a fryer. Feel free to enlighten me.