Trans Fats: Good Riddance

The Food Police are not watching you. But there is a growing public health tidal wave aimed at fixing what’s broken, and it’s vastly different than what the buffoons looking to preserve the status quo at the risk of the public’s health would have you believe. Their arguments, scantily clad in civil libertarian clothing, are specious.

The critics are back after several jurisdictions, most notably New York City, made restaurants eliminate trans fats from their food. Trans fats are artificial fats made from a liquid into a solid in a factory process. They came into widespread use in the age of margarine, a trans fat, when they were thought to have none of the ill effects of butter.

Now we know they clog arteries and raise bad cholesterol while lowering good cholesterol. Unlike all other fats, they have no benefits of any kind in any diet. Trans fats, known on labels as “hydrogenated oils,” are popular because they are cheap, last longer than other oils both on the shelf and in the fryer, and help maintain a veneer of freshness. Baked goods, for example, stay soft and chewy almost indefinitely when baked with certain trans fats versus butter or natural lard. Foods fry crispier, making for dramatic texture, but no flavor benefit. But trans fats do not need to exist. They are essentially poisonous additives.

Consuming trans fats also increases your chances of a heart attack, stroke, or vascular disease. The government requires food manufacturers to identify trans fats separately on food labels, but has no similar guidelines for restaurants.

The Center for Consumer Freedom, one of those mouthpiece agencies financed by woefully selfish splinter sects of the restaurant and food industry, espouses the “what’s next” argument, intended to frighten you into thinking that the government is about to legislate away your cup of coffee because it has caffeine in it or tell you what size hamburger to eat.

It isn’t.

Trans fats, like cigarettes, are creating a public health crisis that is costing you money and costing many Americans their lives. Last week, I ate at five local restaurants, none of which uses trans fats in its foods, all of which bake and fry. And, yes, Virginia, the food was edible. Large food companies have already found replacements (take a look at the new Crisco).

Some restaurants and food service companies will have to reformulate recipes and reengineer some cooking methods. Is that reason enough to decide not to protect the public health? Many fast-food companies, long seen as slow adapters, have already made big changes. Wendy’s eliminated trans fats last year in all 6,300 of its stores. McDonald’s has largely eliminated them in Denmark, where the law requires it, but drags its feet here. Its fries are loaded with trans fats.

Mayors Rybak and Coleman, along with Governor Pawlenty, should call for an immediate end to the use of trans fats here. But they prefer to protect an industry’s profits.

Regulating fats is not about telling other people what to eat and how to eat it. The argument is about labeling and choice, and while some restaurants will have to spend money to comply with new rules, many restaurants all over the country are already advertising that they are trans fat–free because it’s a successful selling point.

Sadly, many restaurants that use a large number of processed and premade foods don’t care or know these poisons are in most of what they feed their customers or that it has no need to be there. This, even though every agency from the American Medical Association to the USDA tells us that there are no safe levels of trans fat consumption.

Sometimes Big Brother knows best.