Do you believe your local government exists to protect you? Does your local government have the right to decide what you eat and how you eat it?
On Tuesday, New York City announced plans to require all trans fats gets cut out of your diet when you eat out whether you want it that way or not:
The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with plans to prohibit the city’s 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains more than a minute amount of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease. …
If approved, the proposal voted on yesterday by the Board of Health would make New York the first large city in the country to strictly limit such fats in restaurants. Chicago is considering a similar prohibition affecting restaurants with less than $20 million in annual sales.
The New York prohibition would affect the city’s entire restaurant industry, by far the nation’s largest, from McDonald’s to fashionable bistros to street corner takeouts across the five boroughs. …
Officials said that the typical American diet now contains 5.8 grams of trans fats per day, and that a single five-ounce serving of French fries at many restaurants contained 8 grams of trans fats.
If the role of the government is to provide for the public welfare,
shouldn’t that role begin with what bites between your bicuspids and
greases down your gullet?
Isn’t a healthier you — even if earned by forced restrictions and
mandated ingredients — always in your best interest and in the bigger
and better interest of the city residents surrounding you?
On Thursday, Robert De Niro — actor and New York City restaurant owner of Nobu and Tribeca Grill — was pulled into the fray by the mayor of New York:
De Niro, an owner and investor in several culinary
hotspots, went to City Hall on Thursday for a news conference related
to his Tribeca Film Festival but stayed for the mayor’s general
briefing with the press, at which Bloomberg was asked about the health
department’s trans fats ban. …With De Niro standing behind him, the mayor pointed out that many food
makers already have eliminated trans fats on their own, following the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s requirement this year that
ingredient labels show trans fat content. Companies including Frito-Lay
and Kraft have reconfigured recipes for many of their most popular
packaged goods, including Doritos and Oreos, replacing the trans fats,
which are typically listed as partially hydrogenated oil….“If you look at some of the best restaurants in this city, including
Robert De Niro’s, they do not use trans fats because they don’t need
them in their food and there’s no reason to have them,” Bloomberg said.
If you decide to break the trans fat ban by bringing your own unhealthy
oil into a restaurant and spreading it over your meal and the meals of
your wife and children, should you be arrested for being a danger to
yourself and others as well as endangering the welfare of a child?