I just read on yahoo news that New York City is now looking to ban trans fats in restaurants, bakeries, fast food joints etc. They are currently running a voluntary program to reduce trans fats but apparently that's not working, so they are looking to ban altogether. Chicago is apparently currently considering a similar voluntary program. I found several things intereting about the article. (I never link to articles because eventually the article will be gone and it will be a broken link and I hate that!) First of all I found it intersting that it is New York and Chicago doing the banning. I would figure that someplace like LA and even my own home of rock and twig lovers Seattle would be the first two to do something like this.
My next thought was what's next? We've banned smoking. Now we're banning being fat. What's next? Being single? Being an unwed parent? (Oh no, they tried that it didn't change anything). And while smoking IS a health risk to others, my being fat doesn't really hurt anyone else. It does, I suppose, with regards to health care coverage costs since hypothetically we fatties are more likely to need medical care I know in my own life that isn't necessarily true. Although I can tell you that our current health care costs are outrageous at my job and that's because of all the cancer people we've had who 20 years ago would've died a lot sooner than they did and none of those were due to fatness. With the exception of the tendon (also not related to fattness but to short achilles tendons, something else probably genetic), I'm actually rather healthy. (Oh yeah and the celiac thing but that's genetic and totally unrelated to fatness. That's my parents' fault.) And as some of the things I've read suggest being sickly underweight is actually worse for you than being moderately overweight. (Ok I'm NOT moderately overweight, but I'm not necessarily the poster child for the argument either.) I was going somewhere with the rest of this, but I've lost my train of thought. Darn my job. :)
5 comments:
I didn't read the article but I am thinking that they are just trying to get rid of trans fat because they are harmful, not all fat.
People that cut trans fats out of their diets by reading labels are kind of left on their own at restaurants but I wonder if they couldn't just have menu items that were marked whether they had trans fats or not so that people could choose.
I am thrilled with the no smoking, personally. I would like to see the entire country adopt it but alas, it will be a while before the SE US does.
Guess what? Banning trans fats isn't going to turn fatties into skinnies.
Chicago banned foie gras too, but what made me laugh about that was the night (or shortly) before the ban went into effect, there were many 'foie gras' parties and specials at local restaurants. Probably ate more that night than would normally be consumed in a month.
Oh, and apology accepted. :)
Why on earth would Chicago ban foie gras? That's so weird.
Because they force feed ducks to fatten their livers.
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