California Bans Trans Fats!

[WCLegend90]

Trans-fats banned in California
California has become the first US state to ban restaurants and food retailers from using trans-fats, which are linked to coronary heart disease.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said the new legislation, which will take effect in 2010, represented a "strong step toward creating a healthier future".

Violations will incur fines of between $25 (?13) and $1,000 (?502).

Trans-fats are chemically altered vegetable oils, used to give processed foods a longer shelf-life.

Some cities, like New York City, Philadelphia and Seattle, have already banned the fats. Many food makers and restaurant chains have also been experimenting with replacements for oils and foods that contain them.

'Tremendous benefit'

Trans-fats are produced artificially in a process called hydrogenation which turns liquid oil into solid fat.

They can be used for frying or baking, or put into processed foods and ready-made mixes for cakes and drinks like hot chocolate.

Trans-fats are used because they are cheap, add bulk to products, have a neutral flavour and give products a long shelf-life.

TRANS-FATS
They are partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, turning oily foods into semi-solid foods
Used to extend shelf life of products
Put into pastries, cakes, margarine and some fast foods
Can raise levels of "bad" cholesterol
Even a small reduction in consumption can cut heart disease
They have no nutritional benefit
The US Food and Drug Administration estimates that on average, Americans eat 4.7lb (2.14kg) of trans-fats each year.
A review by the New England Journal of Medicine in 2006 concluded that there was a strong connection between the consumption of trans-fats and coronary heart disease. It found they boosted "bad" cholesterol levels in the body.

The review said that eliminating artificial trans-fats from the food supply could prevent between six and 19% of heart attacks and related deaths each year.

The legislation signed by Mr Schwarzenegger will ban from 1 January 2010 the use of trans-fats in oil, shortening and margarine used in spreads or for frying.

The president of the California Academy of Family Physicians, Jeffrey Luther, said that the law, "when it finally takes effect, will be a tremendous benefit", adding that there was no safe level of consumption, as with cigarettes.

The California Restaurant Association opposed the ban, but a spokesman said that it had no plans to challenge it in the courts, in part because some restaurants have already begun to phase out trans-fats to satisfy customers.

Story from BBC NEWS: BBC NEWS | Americas | Trans-fats banned in California

Published: 2008/07/26 03:14:57 GMT

I'm personally very happy with this. Some people will bitch and say, "this goes against our freedoms", but it does not. You'll still be able to eat McDonalds and Burger King, it just won't contain any Trans Fats. Finally the government does something to protect the idiots from killing themselves (and I can now make excuses to eat McDonalds once in a while...LOL)

 

[takeahnase]

Here is a very market-orientated economists' take on the issue:

Is Government Intervention in the Fast Food Industry Justified? Gary Becker

The Becker-Posner Blog

New York City's ban on the use of trans fats in restaurants is the first of many efforts to restrict not only trans fats, but also the whole fast food industry. Boston has approved a similar ban, while on Friday California became the first state not only to ban trans fats in restaurants, but also to ban trans fats in all retail baked goods-packaged goods are so far exempt. San Francisco as well as New York City has approved bills that require fast food chains to post on menus the calorie content of the food they serve. Los Angeles is considering a bill that would prevent fast food restaurants like McDonald's from adding any outlets in a 32 square mile part of the city that already has many such restaurants. The concern behind these and similar ordinances is that trans fats and fast food restaurants have contributed in a significant way to the rapid growth in obesity among Americans.

Several arguments have been advanced to support these and even more onerous bans and restrictions on fast foods, but I believe they are of dubious merit. One claim is that consumption of trans fats, and of fast foods more generally, creates an "externality" because this helps produce obese teenagers and adults. The so-called externality results from the fact that greater obesity raises taxes on others because the medical bills of the obese are partly paid by general taxpayers due to subsidized medical care. As Posner points out, this argument may be weak because obese adults die earlier than others and in this way obesity saves medical costs. However, even if true, I am uneasy about such externality arguments. Typical true externalities occur when actions by one individual or firm directly harm others, as when pollution by a company worsens the health of inhabitants, or when a drunk driver crashes into another car and injuries or kills the driver and passengers of that car.

But the alleged "externality" with regard to obesity is due only to the government's subsidy of medical expenditures, so that it is a case of one government intervention- justified or not- causing another intervention-control of eating. It is not a path of intervention causation that most people would be comfortable with in many situations. For example, since the government subsidizes the medical care of children of poorer parents, a mechanical application of this type of externality argument would say that this justifies governmental control over the number of children that poor parents can have. Additional children of these families create an "externality" by raising taxes on others to pay for the medical costs of these children. Many similar examples can be given where government regulations and other government programs cause certain types of behavior that raise taxes or subsidies and adversely affect taxpayers, even though there would be no externality from this behavior in the absence of the government programs.

Another argument made for interventions in the fast food industry and sales of other foods is that individuals are somehow duped into eating too much, and into eating unhealthy foods. As a result, they gain weight, and become vulnerable to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other ailments. Yet it is hard to justify the word "duped" when studies show that much of the growth in obesity has been due to the development of cheap fast foods that consumers find tasty, and also to the growth of television, computer games, the Internet, and other attractive activities that are sedentary. Increased consumption of low priced tasty foods and changed time allocation toward more sedentary leisure and work activities would be optimal responses according to any model of human behavior where individuals are trying to increase their well being, as they, rather than outsiders, interpret their well being. Economic analysis would predict that the lower priced high caloric goods and sedentary technologies that are found throughout the world would lead to weight gain and growing obesity not only in the United States but also in other richer countries. And so they have. Special theories about consumers being duped, misled by advertising, etc are not needed to explain what are normal responses to low prices and new technologies.

To better understand this movement against fast foods, one has to appreciate first of all that many individuals do not like fat persons. This might be called an externality from obesity because overweight people lower the utility of others, but few people, even including most economists, would want to take government actions to try to correct eating that has such (prejudicial) effects on others. A second crucial point is that most of the gain in obesity is concentrated among children and adults in low income, low educated families, especially African-American families and other minorities. Educated people find it easy to claim that less educated individuals are often misled into choices that the more educated do not like, and often do not understand.

Yet it is no surprise that poorer individuals- poor whites as well as African-Americans-find fast foods particularly attractive. Fast food outlets are so common in poorer neighborhoods partly because they are cheap. In addition, since working single parents (mothers), and working dual parents, predominate in minority families, fast foods are a time saving way to consume tasty foods when free time is scarce. Any possible longer term adverse health consequences of these foods are put on the back burner when immediate needs to feed children and parents are much more pressing.

Requiring restaurants to post calorie content of foods will have a negligible effect on demand for these foods because, as I argue above, consumers are buying these foods not mainly because they are ignorant of the effects on weight, but because of cheapness, convenience, and taste. Banning fast food restaurants would have an effect by eliminating their convenience. Still, substitutes would develop, such as prepared foods in supermarkets, or fast foods served not in chains but in individually owned restaurants (hostility to food chains is also partly responsible for the growth of legislation against them). Maybe eventually some of these substitutes would be banned too. Such continuing extensions of the power of government are a very unattractive prospect. Given all the ineptitude in government regulation, as reflected for example in the regulation of Freddie Mac and Freddie Mae, and in other housing problems, I believe it is better to tolerate some mistakes by consumers in their choice of foods. Such additional regulation of fast foods will make people worse off in the long run as well as in the short run.

 

[Ziltoid]

One thing is for sure that Big Arnold is really into the health and its good to see what he's trying to do...especially schools and for the kids.

 

[takeahnase]

One thing is for sure that Big Arnold is really into the health and its good to see what he's trying to do...especially schools and for the kids.

I am obviously not saying that serving unhealthy food at public schools makes sense. But as to limiting what private enterprises use for ingredients: Legislation in the same spirit during the 70s would have attempted to ban saturated fats.

 

[Gavin LeFever]

I'm 100% behind this.



But I wonder how it will effect The Cheesecake Factory, a Cali-based resto.. Every f-ing CC has trans-fats.

Goodbye Snickers, Oreos, etc...

 

[stylesbjj**]

I support this, but I wonder if they have the power to ban saturated fats as well?

 

[T_Money_]

I support this, but I wonder if they have the power to ban saturated fats as well?

Or creatine, or test-boosters, or organic/farmer's market spinach if there are too many cases of e. coli, etc. This IS an attack on freedom and I imagine it will turn into a war on McD's similar to tobacco. Every food borne illness story and bill like this makes me think all that shit about CODEX might actually come to fruition.

 

[finnegan]

I'm personally very happy with this. Some people will bitch and say, "this goes against our freedoms", but it does not. You'll still be able to eat McDonalds and Burger King, it just won't contain any Trans Fats. Finally the government does something to protect the idiots from killing themselves (and I can now make excuses to eat McDonalds once in a while...LOL)

...and why exactly do we want them around again? Given a long enough timeline, America will only be populated by Nietzchian Supermen since all the smokers and fattys will become extinct.
Government shouldn't dictate what we put into our bodies. Period.

 

[XTrainer]

I can't believe you guys! You actually support this?! It doesn't make a dime's worth of difference whether trans fat is good or bad for you! The point is, the government is telling you ("you" being Californians) what you can and can't eat. That should disturb you deeply.

 

[Donut62]

I am obviously not saying that serving unhealthy food at public schools makes sense. But as to limiting what private enterprises use for ingredients: Legislation in the same spirit during the 70s would have attempted to ban saturated fats.

I don't know what's wrong, because I agree with you.

Fat pieces of shit are fat because they are lazy uneducated dumb asses. If you think having Uncle Sam force restaurants to make them healthier by banning ingredients they feel fit, then I really feel sorry for us all that you can vote. Once again treating the symptoms and not the underlying cause is the quick happy-face political answer. Remember the egg scare of the early 90's? Remember the "low/no fat high carbs" craze? Atkins craze? What if those ideas come up during an election year from a large constituency of voters?

 

[N-do]

Finally the government does something to protect the idiots from killing themselves (and I can now make excuses to eat McDonalds once in a while...LOL)

Unless the government can determine a way to tax idiocy, I think we're all better off just letting them kill themselves.

 

[Reev]

Trans fat is not the only crap thats in food. A rule of thumb i try to use is if i can't pronounce a word on the ingredients list i dont buy it.

 

[rpnp]

theres so many fines here in california its ridiculous... all it is is just one more fine..... it doesnt mean anything...

 

[Donut62]

Trans fat is not the only crap thats in food. A rule of thumb i try to use is if i can't pronounce a word on the ingredients list i dont buy it.

What if you are a biochemist and fluent in latin?

 

[TopCat]

Unless the government can determine a way to tax idiocy, I think we're all better off just letting them kill themselves.

That's pretty much my view. The younger and faster people die, the more we can curb the population and the strain on resources.

Of course, on the other hand, anything that takes easy profit away from the corporations I find ideal.

I'm torn. Good thing I don't live in CA so I don't have to think about it.

 

[stylesbjj**]

Transfats is probably the worst processed additive in foods today. The government does have the right to ban certain things from good (cocaine, mercury, ect.), but the transfat jig seems borderline to me.

 

[romistrub]

Here's the way I see it:

California is a fairly "socialist" state (compared to the other U.S. states, at least). The beauty of the U.S. is that each state is unique in its governmental policy. If you don't want to live in a socialist state, you should probably avoid California. Since Cali will probably socialize healthcare before other states (assuming that they haven't already, and assuming that there isn't a national socialized health-care initiative come February), they will have to monitor citizen's health closely, and take preventative measures to curb expensive hospital visits. Socialism is, at least in theory, supposed to allow the population to put some of their concerns in the hands of the goverment. Some people like it, some people don't.

Yes, I know this is my first post, but you've gotta start somewhere.

 

[Disco]

What if you are a biochemist and fluent in latin?

Cut your tongue out.

 

[stylesbjj**]

Here's the way I see it:

California is a fairly "socialist" state (compared to the other U.S. states, at least). The beauty of the U.S. is that each state is unique in its governmental policy. If you don't want to live in a socialist state, you should probably avoid California. Since Cali will probably socialize healthcare before other states (assuming that they haven't already, and assuming that there isn't a national socialized health-care initiative come February), they will have to monitor citizen's health closely, and take preventative measures to curb expensive hospital visits. Socialism is, at least in theory, supposed to allow the population to put some of their concerns in the hands of the goverment. Some people like it, some people don't.

Yes, I know this is my first post, but you've gotta start somewhere.

There have been quite a few epic budget cuts since the Terminator came into office.

 

[RJ Powell**]

I support this, but I wonder if they have the power to ban saturated fats as well?

Considering early human life was pretty much built on the consumption of saturated fats, i'd say no.