Trans fat nannies

Earlier this month, New York City became the first—and hopefully, the last—city in the United States to ban the use of artificial trans fats in restaurant foods.

It is no secret that trans fatty acids are bad for you. They’ve been shown to lower “good” cholesterol while raising the bad stuff, making them even worse than saturated fats at raising the risk of heart disease. But educating people and businesses about the dangers of such foods, then letting them make their own choices, would seem to make more sense. It’s not as though anyone with an IQ over 50 actually believes that fried chicken and doughnuts are health food.

Those of us who have been kicking around the food beat for a while remember when the nutrition-minded folk raised a stink about using lard and beef fat in fried foods and baked goods. The food industry switched to palm oil. Oops, palm oil is highly saturated. They switched to palm-free vegetable shortening. Oops again, shortening is full of nasty trans fats. So now you can buy shortening without trans fat. It makes an OK pie crust (a little more fragile than one made with regular shortening), but I have to wonder what they’re doing now to harden vegetable oil, and whether 10 years down the road we’re going to hear that the new shortening is even worse than the old stuff. *

As Grandma said, everything in moderation. If you eat gobs of fried foods and pastries instead of your veggies, which fat they’re fried in is only one of your worries.

Tell you what, all you state-sponsored health and lifestyle nannies: If you honestly care about our health, how about giving us universal health coverage? Otherwise, shut up and let me eat my pie.

* Update, summer 2007: Sure enough, at least one study has found that the newly formulated trans fat-free shortenings might raise blood sugar and lower “good” cholesterol.