It Came From New York City...

When New York City passed a ban on cooking oils with trans fats for all restaurants, I was definitely against it, but since I haven't been to the Big Apple in over four years, I didn't let myself get worked up about it. But now, like a lot of bad ideas, it appears to be spreading like wildfire, including into my sometimes-stomping-ground, the city of Philadelphia. And now I'm pissed. There's a disturbing trend at the state and local government levels these days towards nanny state policies being put in place to protect people from themselves--my home state of Delaware has already banned smoking in just about every place you can think of. It's all in the name of good health, but it's at the cost of basic civil liberties--our own right to regulate what we put into our bodies (and before anyone comments about illegal drugs, no one has ever died from an acute overdose of cigarettes or fatty foods), and entrepreneurs' rights to run their business how they see fit (so long as they don't interfere with free and fair trade). Are trans fats bad for us? Probably. Do restaurants use more of them than they should (to save a few bucks from their lower cost and longer shelf life)? Again, probably. But the way to truly effect long term change in public health is to create educated consumers, and to legislate disclosure, rather than wielding the Hammer of Bureaucracy to ban products outright.