U.S. Ban on Trans Fat

Since our group is doing hypertension, I thought this article is of some interest. I actually saw this report on the NBC nightly news on September 27. Anyways, the article is from http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=22&art_id=qw1159394581837B243, titled "US trans fat ban: life-saver or Orwellian?". It talks about the American obesity epidemic and how that's related to the trans fat. According to medical professionals, trans fat can dramatically increase one's blood pressure, and risk of heart attack not to mention other weight related problems. New York city is considering a ban all trans fat in restaurants especially the fast food chains. This ban according to officals will lower the risk of early death and generally make people more healthy. Some restaurants in the area have already changed their cooking oil from trans fat based to regular butter or vegetable oils. So what is trans-fat, well, I did a little bit of reading on it on wikipedia. Trans-fat is a chemically motified vegetable oil. Trans fat naturally occurs in animal fats in very low percentages; 1 or 2 percent at most. Oil from animal fats are reported to be more expensive than vegetable oil, yet animal fat based oil is needed to "give the french fries the crunch". So, us engineers chemically motified vegetable oil so that it will have a much higher boiling point. This property give food a much longer shelf life and its distinct fast food test. Anyways, going back to the article, this ban while good is an infringement on civil liberty. People themselves ultimately have the choice of what they want eat. If the government has to step in to tell people what they can eat, then what's next? How is that different from communism? Restaurants will change its ways based on popular demands. Those restaurants that serve food bathed in trans fat will not attract business from health conscience customers and vise versa.