I never agree with the cost portion. I don't see how vegetable oil would be any less than 0 trans fat oil. The cost is when alternatives are used which resturants would consider 0 trans fat options.

I think the portion wanting trans fats should pay the extra amounts. I shouldn't be punished for eating healthier.

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I want to change the world but they won't give me the source code.

From what I can tell it isn't that healthy food is expensive but that unhealthy food is artificially cheap. Foods that are high and starch and foods like corn syrup that is in everything are highly subsidized.

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"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Plain old natural vegetable oil is more volatile and has a shorter shelf life that trans oils like crisco type "lard". I don't think it even lasts as long when using it to fry. It breaks down causing nasty flavors quicker I think.

One of the reasons we started using trans fats in mass produced foods is that the trans fats gave the foods longer shelf life. Natural, healthy oils go rancid more quickly than do trans fats. This doesn't mean that trans fats are good for you though :-) Maybe good for food producers budgets.


You say: I think the portion wanting trans fats should pay the extra amounts. I shouldn't be punished for eating healthier.

Trans fats have been the main type used in the food industry so it is still largely geared TOO that and they are the cheaper way to go still. This is mainly up to the consumer taking more interest in his/her health. When we all stop paying for this crap they'll stop making it.

There's that aspect of it too.

We, as consumers have the final say though. IF we choose to speak up by educating ourselves and how we buy stuff :-)

I agree. I have no problem with people being better educated about the content of food and having restaurants at least inform consumers more about what they are buying would be great but ultimately they should make the call.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Vegetable oils are cheap, since they come from highly subsidized agricultural commodities such as soy, corn and cotton. When hydrogenated, their new, artificial stability makes them irresistible to industrial food processors.
Trans Fats lengthen shelf life.

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I want to change the world but they won't give me the source code.

I would have no problem with eliminating the subsidies for soy, corn, and cotton.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Agreed. Myself, I became a food nut/cook when I started to become a health nut ... which happened because I used to be kinda fat so I took a fitness class in college every quarter for three years (best thing I GOT out of college besides my degree). So now I like to make a lot of my own meals.

I think many of us are so stuck in the "convenience" mode of frozen, boxed, canned crap that we just want our guts full .. and quickly. Just one of the small negatives in our culture of "quickie", convenient consumerism I think.

True. Apart from the cost involved people also just do not have enough time to really take care of themselves and cook healthy meals. Too busy working so we can buy more stuff.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Too busy my butt :-) We each make time for things that are important to us.

Just a bit of a generally messed up system of prioritizing I think :-)

Can't solve this one. I got enough of my OWN to solve. Let each of us decide what things are really the most important to us based on what results we're looking for I guess.

I know, most of us are too busy to even do THAT

Or just don't care to :-)

I have been trying to find more quality time with my wife. I miss her. I know she can't cook so I would need to do it which is difficult considering the time I'm not at work I'm usually taking care of my eight months old. Right now he is asleep right by me but at any time he could wake up and be hungry, need attention, or have a shitty diaper. I wonder if a healthy fast food restaurant would work. Good healthy food on the go in a drive thru. Porbably not or it would exist.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Much of it is in environment. People take the path of least resistance and at the same time convenience of living. McDonald's did not become a multi-billon dollar company selling salad. Probably our kids will revert back to a much healthier living and despise the fast food world much like cigarettes have become in this generation.

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I want to change the world but they won't give me the source code.

Nobody chooses trans fats. I certainly was not given the choice or the knowledge that they even existed, until they were shown to cause your heart to fail. Seriously, what moron would choose transfats over normal oils or fats? Chip manufacturers in Canada no longer put transfats in their products, and i know from personal experience that there in no taste difference whatsoever. Its nice that some corps voluntarily choose not to use transfats, given the insanity of their use. But as is always the case, most corps will choose to use the ingredient that keeps their profit margins high. But i personally think the role of government should be to promote a healthy and educated society. Food manufacturers who produce food with no nutritional value at all should either have to label their product as lethal, or not manufacture it at all. Drug manufacturers are required to do this, i dont see why junk food manufacturers should not fall under the same regulations.


In canada we have universal health care. I believe that countries with universal health care should promote health and education on how to be healthy. The danger of the user of transfats is that they take up a needed bed in a hospital because they chose to have a heart attack by eating trans-fats. The harm is immeasurable in my society, and i would argue that in the US people who choose to have heart attacks increase health insurance premiums and are also a danger to the general well being and health of society.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

I'm also actually surprised at that considering KY is also a 'red state.' I felt such a move was more an en vogue thing in 'blue states'. Personally I've never been sympathetic to this cause when it comes to bars. Other places, yes, but not bars. Bars aren't gyms or churches. As a person who worked in bars for many years, I was always honest that bars are 'dens of vice' even though I enjoy them tremendously even as a non-drinker myself (just being typically Irish in that regard I guess) and that they specialise in dealing a seriously addicting narcotic, i.e., alcohol, that has tremendous negative social consequences that affect society as a whole besides those who consume it. Bars also entertain other vices, some of which also have negative social consequences both to the participants as well as others through their collateral effects. Smoking is/was one of the many vices also entertained there, and alot who hang out in bars smoke. To me, it's always been insincere to allege, as often done, that the drinkers, carousers, gamblers, junk food eaters, etc, who hang in bars only harm themselves whilst second-hand smoke harms more than the smoker considering all the negative collateral social costs caused by alcohol usage and the other vices. Moreover, it falls on unsympathetic ears to me that people who choose to work or hang out in bars to protest against the effects of smoke whilst those who work and attend them have the primary purpose of trafficking and/or indulging in narcotics like alcohol and other vices.

I take a different approach on this than above because it deals with food itself. The government has long regulated unsafe things with foods. Take, for example, the Red Dye #3 of the maraschino cherries that was causing cancer. This was detected and removed with something safer. If trans-fats can be removed and replaced with something safer, then that seems highly appropriate.

The legal problem I see is that such regulation falls within the ambit of the interstate commerce clause of the US Constitution considering all the products involved flow in such commerce. This means no city ordinance can conflict with any federal regulations concerning such traffic and/or the federal system can always preempt such ordinances. I am sure such an ordinance will draw lawsuits and lobbying on the federal level from all those who make products involving trans-fats.

I have stated an alternative to this new regulation in NYC that I would be in favor of earlier in the thread.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"