What Took So Long?
The State of California is considering a ban on hydrogenated vegetable oils more commonly known as trans-fats, or trans fatty acids (TFAs).
It’s about damn time!
Regular readers of this column may note this seems antithetical to my thoughts on government intrusion. Not true.
I, perhaps more than anybody else, am totally opposed to the government’s attempts to regulate what I put in my body. However, I believe the government’s first duty is to protect the citizenry.
TFAs are dangerous to humans.
As we all know, heart disease kills a tremendous number of people each year in America. The most common presentation of heart disease is acute myocardial infarction (AMI). That’s where the arteries supplying blood to the heart muscle get clogged—by a diet high in TFAs. Do a Google search on trans fatty acids and myocardial infarction, then read one of the 300,000 articles on the subject if you don’t believe me. Add to that the link between TFAs and obesity, and you will find that TFAs are costing us hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
A friend of mine recently went for an overnight stay in the hospital to have some stents—which open up the clogged arteries—installed. Stents are much cheaper than a bypass, but even so, his bill came to over $100,000. He is on Medicare so we all ended up paying it. Multiply this by the estimated one-and-a-half million patients a year and pretty soon, you’re talking real money.
I can almost understand the people who oppose the government getting involved. People get tired of a “Nanny” government. However, what they are actually saying here is, “Other people should have a right to put poisons in my food. I have a right to poison myself and make other people pay for my health care when I do.”
Festival of errors!
You may have a right to poison yourself, but don’t expect me to pick up after you.
For the record: Yes, I do smoke, and no, I will not make others pay if I suffer unfortunate consequences from it. Do I believe the government should outlaw tobacco? No, only the commercial sale of it. I’ll grow my own.
I read an article on the deleterious effects of TFAs about twenty-five years ago and have done my best to avoid them ever since.
I wonder how many people, ignorant of the danger, have died in that time? My father died of an AMI when he was sixty-one. He ate margarine exclusively because it was cheaper than butter and free of animal fats.
I wonder how many trillions of dollars have been transferred from working Americans to Big Medicine in the last twenty-five years?
I wonder what took so long?