The nanny in your kitchen
Three years after the city banned smoking in restaurants, health officials are talking about prohibiting something they say is almost as bad: artificial trans fatty acids.
The city health department unveiled a proposal Tuesday that would bar cooks at any of the city’s 24,600 food service establishments from using ingredients that contain the artery-clogging substance, commonly listed on food labels as partially hydrogenated oil.
Artificial trans fats are found in some shortenings, margarine and frying oils and turn up in foods from pie crusts to french fries to doughnuts.
I guess they could get all California on them and sue Crisco?
September 27th, 2006 at 10:19 am
As a New Yorker, I would like to have more healthy food options. We live in a world where medical bills are increasingly a community expense. When Fatty McWideload clutches his chest and faceplants into his double bacon cheeseburger, the medical SWAT team response is very expensive and his bill is paid from a community pot (insurance and government funding). In other words, his clogged arteries produce externalities. It’s these significant externalities that can justify some government meddling.
Now, I agree that an outright ban is ridiculous, but I would support forcing local restaurants to internalize some of the external costs of slowly killing their clientelle. If the transfatty crud cost a little more than substitute oils, they’d use less of it.
September 27th, 2006 at 11:30 am
What really ironic is that the Health Nazis created this situation in the first place when they forced food companies to stop using natural saturated fats like coconut oil about 15 years ago. The companies replaced them with hydrogenated oils that were artificially saturated and Voila! we have another health crisis.
September 27th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Oh noes! A solution to a problem wasn’t perfect! We need to adjust now that we have more information! How ironic! Quick, call Alanis Morisette!
BTW, I’m not aware of any coconut oil ban. It fell out of fashion (perhaps because it’s got the “wrong” kind of fat), but there’s no federal ban on it and NY state and NYC have no laws against it.
September 27th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Besides the general nanniness of it all, I’m agin the ban because nutriontional science is so often wrong. It makes for a pretty lousy foundation for passing laws.
September 27th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
When I used the term “Health Nazis” I was referring to private nanny groups such as the deceptively-named Center for Science in the Public Interest (who are lawyers, not scientists) that browbeat companies for using coconut and palm oils back in the late 80s/early 90s. While it’s true that no government entity banned the stuff, alot of the usual suspects were saying the same things about saturated fats back then as they do about trans fats nowadays. And companies, ever eager to avoid negative publicity and possible government regulations, went along and caved in.
The problem with banning natural saturated fats is that they have very little to do with causing heart disease, just as dietary cholesterol intake had very little to do with causing heart disease (but that was the bugaboo back in the 70’s), just as trans fats have very little to do with it today.
Heart disease is caused by several factors, but the three biggest are lack of exercise, obesity and smoking. The type of fat you eat — other than determining overall caloric content — is simply not that significant, although I do recognize that trans fats are more difficult for the body to metabolize.
You touched on the real cause of heart disease in the first paragraph of your comment above: If you don’t stop stuffing your face and get your fat ass off the couch, it doesn’t matter what type of fat you eat, you’re probably going to have heart disease or high blood cholesterol or diabetes. It’s the lack of discipline and restraint that is killing Americans — not the type of fat they eat.
September 27th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
Holly,
I agree that the type of fat is less important than hauling your fat ass to the gym once in a while. People neglect their bodies and look to science to take care of their health for them.
That’s not to say the type of fat you eat is unimportant. There are societies where fat intake is high while incidence of heart disease and high blood pressure are low. There’s *something* going on there, and food scientists are trying to figure it out. If preferring one type of oil to another makes a difference, I’m all for encouraging people to adjust accordingly.
September 27th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Uncle:
NY wants to ban fatty foods
For someone who constantly bitches about misleading headlines, that’s a pretty big plank you’ve got in yer eye, there. What NY wants to ban is trans fats, a particular type of fat, generally found in heavily hydrogenated oils and shortenings and known to be exceptionally bad for your circulatory system. If the ban were to succeed, there are other cooking fats that are 100% trans-fat free that could be used, and would make food no less “fatty” or fattening, but considerably less bad for your arteries.
Personally, I think a ban is excessive. I’d prefer that you simply tax the snot out of it. (A big part of the reason these oils are used so widely is because they’re cheap. Taxation solves that little problem.)
Les:
I’m agin the ban because nutriontional science is so often wrong.
Highly unlikely in this case. Even the ban’s opponents don’t deny that the science behind the harmful impact of trans fats is rock solid.
Further, nutritional science isn’t wrong very often at all; it’s exceedingly rare for them to say “X is bad for you” when X is in fact good for you (or at least not bad for you). The perception of “wrongness” persists because it’s fairly often the case that nutritionists (correctly) identify X as being bad for you, and people avoid X, instead replace it with alternative Y which is even worse for you. That doesn’t mean that the nutritionists were wrong when they claimed “X is bad.” Trans fats are a good example of this, as are “low fat/fat free” products that compensate for the fat loss by heavily increasing sugar content.
September 27th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
tgirsch Says:
The evidence does seem to be stacking up against trans-fats.
Les Says:
Do you remember when the Center for Science in the Public Interest held a Media Event about the evils in the saturated fat that was in coconut oil? They were most commonly used in movie popcorn, and the resultant pressure caused all the major chains to switch.
What they switched to was trans-fat based partaly hydrognated veggie oil. The “Food Police” were happy and went on to something else, proably the evils in chinese food or something.
Nowadays, I find coconut oil in the health food stores. Teh “food police” have never issued a retraction.
blog post
September 27th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
tgirsch Says:
let’s see here,
They said saturated fat was bad for you, use vegetable shortening instead.
Crisco, at the time was made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (i.e. loaded with trans-fats)
They said that butter had too much cholesterol. Use margarine instead
Margarine had no cholesterol, but almost everyone of them at the time had tons of trans-fat.
They said that low-fat, lower on the food chain diet was better for you.
It turns out that unless you lower your calorie intake, that lowfat diet won’t help losing weight. Further more, all those carbs make many people’s blood suger yo-yo, and may contribute to type-2 diabetes.
They said to reduce consumption of avocados, as that was one of the few vegetables that had a lot of fat in it.
Avocados are claimed to have “good fat”, now.
They said to reduce consumption of shrimp, because it is loaded with cholesterol.
Nowadays, they are not as worried about consumed cholesterol, unless you test high, and also they found that there’s omega-3 fatty acids in shrimp, which they want you to eat more of.
I can probably dig up a few more, but I think my point has been made.
September 27th, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Hugger made all the salient points:
“I would like to have more healthy food options.”
You have those options now. The “Nutritional Hygiene Police” are trying to limit your options. In fact, if there is really a demand for healthier resturants, get some of your friends together and open one, then watch the profits roll in.
“We live in a world where medical bills are increasingly a community expense. When Fatty McWideload clutches his chest and faceplants into his double bacon cheeseburger, the medical SWAT team response is very expensive and his bill is paid from a community pot…”
And here we come to the most significant point ever: Every tiny little bit of socialism always demands a little bit more.
Get rid of the socialism and the whole issue evaporates into thin air. Hang on to the assertion that since the state takes care of you, the state has a stake in your behavior, so therefore the state must, by all rights, and to protect the interests of the taxpayer, control your behavior. Mandatory exercise will come next, with regular health inspections and fines for not towing the line. Oh, but certain genes give the certain children of certain parents a strong propensity for certain illnesses. Maybe the taxpayer should be spared the expense and we should get into forced abortions or fines for having children. Hey the Chinese did it, why not? After all, its in the Public Interest.
Myself, I advocate Liberty as the proven superior alternative. (and we wont have to argue about molecules, either) Anyone want to second that or are we going just a tiny bit further down the drain into the steel jaws of tyranny?
September 27th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
I don’t believe anybody really defended this bullshit.
Hey, how about a ban on sex. Look how many diseases are spread by its practice. Counting just one disease, AIDS, has killed millions of people in just 30 years, more than auto accidents, wars, murders, and polio, smallpox, measles, and food poisoning combined. If we agree that the state can ban something as pedestrian as Crisco, why not ban something as universal and sought after as sex. After all, the same concerns apply, insurance pools and government funds , often for years and years longer than a mere heart patient. And the treatments are much more expensive, to boot(or bootie, as the case may be).
Hey if it saves just one life, and Brutal Hugger one dollar, it would be worth it.
September 27th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Not a slam BH, just you were the first to post and I needed a name to sort of personalize the ridiculous proposition. However, it isn’t more ridiculous than this nanny state bullshit and makes my proposition inevitable, if we keep accepting this crap.
September 28th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
Mischief:
I don’t concede that the point is made. Setting aside for the moment the fact that you didn’t actually source any of the claims you’ve made, in most of the cases you’ve listed, the suggested replacement, while still bad for you, is indeed less bad than what it was suggested to replace. See, for example, here, where we see that even when you include trans fat in the picture, margarine still has almost 30% less heart-unhealthy fat than butter, and no cholesterol. So in the case of butter vs. margarine, the latter is less bad for you than the former. It’s just not as much less bad as originally thought.
Lyle:
You have those options now. The “Nutritional Hygiene Police” are trying to limit your options.
Only if you completely avoid dining out and processed foods. Meanwhile, the restaurant and processed food industries have a vested profit interest in convincing consumers to eat more and more of these foods that are bad (because those foods are also cheap, and thus high-margin). Again, I’d prefer taxation to an outright ban, but it’s silly to suggest that such a ban would reduce the number of healthy food choices available.
straightarrow:
Hey, how about a ban on sex. Look how many diseases are spread by its practice.
Apples and oranges. For one thing, the analog to a ban on sex would not be a ban on trans fat, but a ban on food. For another, the ban would be on the sale of trans fats, and we already ban the sale of sex.
In any case, if it’s “nanny state bullshit” to think that the government has a role to play in protecting public health and safety, then sign me up for nanny state bullshit.
September 28th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Oh, and the proposed ban is only on trans-fat use in restaurants, so you’d still have the option to buy your Crisco and fry whatever the hell you want.
But, of course, requiring restaurants to hold to certain safe practices is more “nanny state bullshit,” I’m sure. Next thing you know, these nanny-state fuckers are going to require pest inspections and proper refrigeration.
September 28th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
tgirsch Says:
Well, which of the claims I made do you want me to source? Do you doubt that some nutritionists use to recommend a lowered shrimp consumption due to the cholesterol, or are you doubting that they have omega 3 fatty acids?
Do you doubt that the Crisco of old was claimed to be healthier than lard? I can’t yet prove conclusively that trans-fats are worse than saturated fats, but as for me, I’d chose the potato chips fried in lard over the ones fried in partly hydrogenated vegetable oil any day. I think further research will indicate that saturated fats are more benign than trans-fats. Like I stated, the coconut oil (loaded with saturated fat) is now showing up in the health food stores.
Some of the claims are pre-net and are somewhat hard to google up, but I’ll try my best, but I’ll not source everything.
Again, I personally avoid any spread with trans-fat, and I think that tran-fat will pan out to be worse than naturally occurring saturated fats. I’m using the gunk with omega-3s nowadays.
The tough part about proving anything nutrition based, is that it depends on who you chose to believe. Even the USDA has been criticized for holding on to the “four food groups” for entirely too long, presumably because of lobbyist efforts from the dairy and meat trusts. I myself would criticize the new food pyramid’s recommendations for 6 servings of potatoes, rice, and pasta a day. If you are going to eat that much carbs, at least chose something with a higher glycemic index.
September 28th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Again, if there is a demand for healthier foods in resturants, and no one is filling that demand, you have an untapped profit niche. Go for it, and more power to you.
Apperantly Liberty is a largely unkown and largely misunderstood concept.
If you own your own body (“my body, my choice”, and all. Remember that?) then no one on Earth has a right to claim control over it but you, and perhaps your spouse family. If, on the other hand, the State owns your body, then anything goes. Your choices are to be limited only to those approved by the State.
This whole argumant is silliness, except for the fact that the consequences are so profound.
Understand also, that we are not talking about food here. We are talking about a process. The process of userpation by the State. They never, ever define a specific end goal, but instead finish one ban or restriction, then go straight into pushing for the next one.
After they get this crap through, what’s next? And next, and next and next?
September 28th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
tgirsch, I was going to reply, but Lyle made the point you missed. It ain’t about food.
September 28th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
SM:
I can’t yet prove conclusively that trans-fats are worse than saturated fats
Actually, from what I’ve read, they are. But as to your sources, I’m not sure nutritionists argued what you say they argued. As I understand it, they suggested replacing frying in beef tallow (for example) with vegetable oil, but restaurants instead used vegetable shortening, which is a very different thing. They then bragged about 100% cholesterol free frying. But that doesn’t make it healthy.
Again, I personally avoid any spread with trans-fat, and I think that tran-fat will pan out to be worse than naturally occurring saturated fats.
Again, probably so, but the question is how much worse? Enough worse to exceed the 30% quantity differential? And again, to the best of my knowledge, nutritionists recommended oil for frying, not shortening.
Lyle:
Again, if there is a demand for healthier foods in resturants, and no one is filling that demand, you have an untapped profit niche.
This is typical libertarian “I took Econ 101 but not Econ 150” thinking. You act as if demand is something that is strictly driven by the consumers and not at all driven by the sellers. Real life doesn’t work that way. Companies spend literally billions of dollars on advertising, with the intention of creating demand. And what do they want to create demand for? High-profit-margin foods, which are almost exclusively really bad for you. (They’re high-margin in part because the raw materials are cheap, and the shelf lives are long so spoilage is much less a concern than with healthy food.)
Apperantly Liberty is a largely unkown and largely misunderstood concept. If you own your own body (”my body, my choice”, and all. Remember that?) then no one on Earth has a right to claim control over it but you, and perhaps your spouse family.
More idiocy which doesn’t even pass the sniff test. If we were talking on a law that made it illegal for people to eat trans fats, you might have a point, but that’s not what we’re talking about. The ban would prohibit restaurants from selling foods containing artificially created trans fats. In other words, it would regulate commerce (which, last I checked, even most libertarians didn’t necessarily oppose), to prohibit, in limited circumstances, the sale of foods containing a known-harmful artificial ingredient. Again, if even that kind of regulation is “nanny state bullshit,” then there’s literally no regulation that would be allowable.
Understand also, that we are not talking about food here. We are talking about a process. The process of userpation by the State.
Oh, lay off the hyperbol-O’s and the slippery-slope bullshit, already. Some kinds of regulation make sense and some don’t, and they should be judged on their merits, not on some apocalyptic “Today my trans-fats, tomorrow my personal autonomy” pants-wettting fear. If it’s too much intrusion for the state to ban the sale and marketing of harmful artificial substances for which there are viable natural, less-harmful or non-harmful alternatives, then what you’re really advocating for is essentially anarchy couched as “liberty.”
September 28th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
tgirsch Says:
Heck, for that part, I’ve already documented it. This is from Wikipedia under trans-fat:
Anyway, sometimes these groups make mistakes, and they don’t always own up to them. In that respect I would be uncomfortable with a “sin tax”. Walnuts were once considered a fatty food that was easy to eliminate from one’s diet. Nowadays, again, they sell walnut oil for cooking. Another “good fat”. Let them get away with the “sin tax” on trans-fats, and they’ll try to tax the crap outta bacon, unpasteurized milk, and stuff like that. Then they’ll subsidized crap like tofu. I hate tofu. I only like it when it’s either in a meat dish, or deep fried (imagine that). The power to tax is the power to destroy.
If anything, I’d be much more comfortable with labeling. Even here, there’s wiggle room, Take a look at my above blog entry. Current regulations let manufactures claim zero grams of trans-fat if the food in question would have less than a half a gram per serving. So that “Jiffy” corn bread can get away with small amounts of hydrogenated veggie oil in addition to the lard. There’s no reason not to require them to publish content down to a tenth of a gram. They already do with the total fat.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
SM:
I’m still skeptical of the authenticity of what you say “they say.” Part of the confusion here is that a study will come out with a certain conclusion and later be contradicted — this happens all the time, but it isn’t the same thing as a formal recommendation by, say, the FDA or the ADA. Unfortunately, the media tends to run with every individual study as though it were gospel truth. And that unfairly increases public skepticism of what dieticians claim.
I’m talking about times when there was a legitimate scientific consensus (like what we have with trans fats). I’m not really aware of many such times where this was the case and proved to be wrong.
September 30th, 2006 at 1:02 am
tgirsch , I assume you are fairly young. The reason for my assumption is that those who have stated the reversal of position as regards dietary do’s and don’t’s remember them. It isn’t just a matter of research, we remember them.
While I have no complaint with your desire to see the evidence, it is obvious you have no memory of the things that have been stated here that provide counterpoint to what is “now” the official position. That is fine, you can’t help when you were born, any more than I could. However, if you truly are interested in finding the truth of the allegations regarding how many different guises dietary correctness has taken, you can find it for yourself. Look at some of the older sites regarding heart health, strokes, etc. Satisfy yourself, rather than doubting our memories.
Though, if you doubt mine, I probably won’t get too exercised about it as I can’t remember s***.
September 30th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
The head of my department (Pediatrics) is all for banning commercials for junk food aimed at kids. Somehow, I doubt this is going to help. (Banning smoking commercials has done nothing for stopping kids’ smoking in my state.) I mentioned this to him, and he acted like I was crazy. “You don’t think we should ban commercials?” I merely said, “I think there’s a better way.” People are so head-over-heels about legislating everything to death. No room for discussion. Tow the party line, please.
October 1st, 2006 at 2:34 am
straightarrow,
Thanks for sticking up for me, but I’m afraid that tgirsch won’t change his mind no matter what I say.
I’ve already linked to a well endnoted Wikipedia article detailing the CSPI total flip-flop on the trans-fat issue. I’ve also asked him what kind of proof he’s looking for, or who he’d like to see the information from.
The problem with using the internet as a sole source is that it’s already the perfect tool for the Ministry of Information (meaning that at some point, I’m pretty sure that it was called something other than “Airstrip One”, but all the history books claim otherwise, if you get the reference)
Now if you do a simple Google search for: avoid avocados
you’ll get all kinds of weasel words.
…Well, that’s when I began to avoid avocados because one cup of cubed avocado contains 22 grams of fat. I now know that most of the fat is of the mono-unsaturated type… (www.dailyhome.com/lifestyle/2006/as-food-0823-0-6h22w0844.htm)
Don’t Avoid Avocados from Fear of Fat. Research suggests that avocados are important… (www.jsu.edu/news/july_dec2006/08242006a.html)
Myth: People should avoid avocados because of their high fat content. Fact: avocados are sodium and cholesterol free with only five grams of fat per… (www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FruitVegetableCosts/Avocados.xls)
Don’t avoid avocados because they have a high fat content: the predominant fat is monounsaturated… (www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/kids/coolfuel.html)
Some dieters avoid Avocados, as they are high in fat — the fat content is about 20%. But two-thirds of the fat is monounsaturated, which actually benefits … (www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/ed.1547)
Avocados: Some of the smartest folks I know avoid avocados as “high fat” foods, but the.. (about.newsusa.com/article-site.asp?ArticleId=3665)
“Some of the smartest folks I know…”; yea, that one is my favorite. Obviously someone’s been telling a lot of folks at some point that they should avoid fatty foods such as avocados. However, it seems a new study came out and the gospel was changed. The old advice gets wiped off the face of teh Internet with just a few keystrokes.
You can refine your original search a bit: avoid avocados daterange:2444239-2453005
will get you results from pages unchanged between 1980 to 2004. As you can see, all the “don’t avoid avocados, they’re really good for you” results have disappeared, because it predates the new study, but there’s absolutely no results telling people that avocados have too much fat for a healthy diet. WTF? All those people who have, up to now, avoided avocados got the idea somewhere, right? Now if I were to dig, I could likely find hardcopy somewhere from someone that’s an authoritative source that tgirsch would believe, but he’s not telling me what he would find acceptable, and I’ve thrown in the towel. At some point you start to listen to that little voice in your head, the one that says:
October 1st, 2006 at 2:41 am
And on the topic of “airbrushing people out of photos”, if the propaganda requires such a radical change that you can’t depend on people’s fuzzy memories, there is a different tactic.
You might be interested in knowing that the official word in China nowadays is that “Mao was seventy percent right and thirty percent wrong”