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Posted on 12/08/2006 10:06:22 PM PST by neverdem
You might think that officials in New York City, which has more people than all but 11 states, had enough to do providing basic city services. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes that what New Yorkers really need is a better diet, and he's just the man to order it. A politician's work is never done.
At the mayor's urging this week, New York's Board of Health voted to ban restaurant use of artificial trans fats, those liquid oils made solid through hydrogenation and found in all manner of fried, baked and processed foods. Many of these products aren't particularly healthy, but then neither are many products people enjoy that contain sugar and caffeine, substances that New York hasn't outlawed. At least not yet.
"We're just trying to make food safer," said Mayor Bloomberg, who nixed smoking in bars a few years back. The city's concern for the health of residents is understandable, but trans fats are not E. coli (or even secondhand smoke), and the federal Food and Drug Administration still considers these chemically modified food ingredients perfectly safe for consumption.
--snip--
Before other cities decide to regulate diets absent a safety issue, they might also consider that some of the same people now pushing for a trans fat ban once recommended the ingredient as a substitute for another health scare: saturated fats. Twenty years ago, Mr. Jacobson's CSPI launched a public relations blitz against fast food joints for using palm oil to cook fries. The group claimed victory when restaurants started using partially hydrogenated oil instead. In 1988, a CSPI newsletter declared that "the charges against trans fat just don't hold up. And by extension, hydrogenated oils seem relatively innocent." Today, Mr. Jacobson is claiming trans fats kill 30,000 people a year. We wonder if he feels guilty.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
And people thought we were crazy when it was said that once they finished with the smokers that they would move on to their next target.
nanny state/health nazi ping
If we were talking about banning butter or fatty hamburgers that would be a different story. But trans fats are an artificial butter substitute developed by the food industry. They are in everything now and if they are so especially unhealthy I say ban or prominently label them.
If they were thought to be healthier 20 years ago, so what? We now know they aren't. This isn't nanny state, why should the food industry be "free" to use a cheap and unhealthy substitute for real food?
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Twenty years ago eggs were "thought" to be so cholestrol ladened they were almost removed from the daily diet by most. Turns out they aren't so bad. Coffee has been a bane of the nutrition nazis, turns out in moderation not so bad, beer the same. Wine can be good too. When does it stop, even veagans are now concidered at risk because they do not get enough creatine in their diet.
Just leave me alone, already!
BINGO!
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"Hey, I'm not fat; I'm TransFat."
So what if a food is found to be unhealthy?
Who the hey are you anyway, or who is the State, for that matter to tell me what I can or can't eat, based on what some busybody thinks is or isn't "good" for me.
How about you mind your own business, and I'll mind mine, as a fair modus operandi?
I've had enough of third party a-holes getting between me and my rare cheesburgers, eggs over easy and cheese and bacon fries.
Get a life, Jacko, and leave me alone.
I don't either, but I don't think a ban is necessarily the answer. Dealing with family food allergies, I've become quite the label reader. I am to the point that I pretty much am only comfortable with food I make at home. Foods are so full of fillers that don't make sense. Almost everything sweet is made with corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup. I don't think restaurants should have to put calorie count or nutritional info on all of their menus, but it would be nice for them to tell us the ingredients (including what kind-of oils they cook with) and let us decided on our own where to eat.
Ever-growing State encroachment into people's personal lives is incomparably more dangerous than transfats.
To make New Yorkers safer, he should cooperate in identifying and deporting the 600,000 illegals. Enforce the law instead of making more laws.
There are a bunch of liberal do-gooders who have successfully gotten the MSM to go with the "trans fats are bad for you" line. Harvard University and the NIH have done some very thorough studies of the trans fats issue and the results only show that overconsumption of any saturated fats have a negative correlation to one's health. Further, I discovered that when I actually took the time to read the actual reports, what the reports actually say is far different than what the MSM says the reports say.
For myself, I avoid trans fats primarily because most naturally occurring fats that are consumed by humans are in the cis configuration, and I feel that if humans have been eating cis fats for the last few million years, well, better the devil you know than the one you don't. Of course, for most of human evolution, there was very little fat of any kind to eat.
Actually, eggs were higher in cholesterol than they are today. They changed something in the chicken feed. Somehow that changed the cholesterol level in eggs.
"At least 46 confirmed cases of E. coli sickness linked to Taco Bell have been reported in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. The FDA said late Wednesday that there are also possible cases in Delaware and Connecticut."
"At least five people in the three states remained hospitalized, including an 11-year-old boy in stable condition with kidney damage." FoxNews.com
I feel so much better that people are finally going after artificial trans fats. That stuff can kill ya! /sarcasm
Peering Into the Future[Genetic Testing]
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Actually, I don't think people are fooling themselves. But you are right about one thing: human diets have not been loaded with fats, that's a relatively recent item. And the fats we ate were usually animal, because there wasn't exactly quarts of corn oil floating around in the paleolithic periods.
But there is alot of new science coming out. The Omega 3 stuff. Many new findings about coconut and palm oil (medium chain fatty acids that the body doesn't store).
I was stunned when I read that during WWII and during Viet Nam, it was not unusual for coconut milk to be pumped DIRECTLY into the bloodstream of seriously injured soldiers to rehydrate them and boost their energy levels.
There ain't many things that you can pump into your blood.
Not many at all.
Amen to that. Saw a report on FNC last evening re Calif now banning Pro Volleyball on the beaches for several reasons one of them being..."saving the sand".
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