The New York Junk Science Diet

Paul Howard, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for Medical Progress, writes an op-ed in the Washington Post today that dismembers the New York City ban on trans fats. He calls it the equivalent of a fad diet. Then he destroys the so-called logic behind the entire thing. The result is calling the whole thing what it really is, nanny state nonsense with a self-declared elite dictating how others live their lives. A policy that will very like do no good whatsoever but will almost certainly have unintended negative consequences.

The science behind the ban is debatable (experts disagree about the relative danger of trans fats vs. other fats) and its logic tenuous (city bureaucrats can't possibly predict the myriad dietary and exercise choices of millions of New Yorkers). After all, obesity and heart disease are complex chronic ailments that are impacted by an individual's genes, diet and exercise (or lack thereof). If trans fats affect health, they only do it at the outside margins.

And, of course, the law of unintended consequences still applies. For instance, once trans fats are eliminated from city restaurants, diners might increase their consumption of french fries and other fried foods under the illusion that they are now "healthier."

The political logic behind the ban is impeccable. McDonald's and other fast food restaurants that use trans fats for frying and baking are an easy target for the city's health-obsessed media and cultural intelligentsia. These are the nation's most health obsessed consumers, who sip red wine, gravitate to yoga studios, and peer obsessively at the fine print on food labels. These voters view "corporate" food as an affront to nature, and what is worse, déclassé. They are more than happy to save the unwashed masses by imposing better health choices, especially since (it is believed) poor urban consumers have no real food choices available to them.

That lack of choice is a real problem in New York City. Howard points out that there are political and policy decisions that could be made to make it easier for large supermarkets to be built in large cities. Most food shopping in New York is done in relatively tiny corner stores and bodegas. The prices are high, the choices limited. Larger grocery stores would give city dwellers more choice and presumably would allow them to choose healthier foods all by themselves like grownups do. In other words a market-based - quite literally - approach that empowers people.

Instead, the nannies proceed merrily down the path they have chosen hearkening to the cries of the wild goose they think they hear. They want their junk science fad diet imposed on their "cultural inferiors" who simply need to be told what to do since they can't be trusted to make their own decisions. Read the whole thing.