There's this guy I used to know who is a Facebook Friend. We once worked at the same company back in the 1980s (we were both editors at a computer magazine, in the old days when people with computers bought magazines and typed in programs). He's very intelligent in some ways, but he's also kind of a Republican/Libertarian -- always complaining about government regulations. Now he's mad about the future ban on trans-fats. More details under the delicious orange cronut...
If you haven't heard the news, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided that partially-hydrogenated oils (aka "trans fats") will be removed from the list of things that are "generally recognized as safe" and they'll be banned from food after 2018.
Here's the NY Times article about it: F.D.A. Sets 2018 Deadline to Rid Foods of Trans Fats.
I think it's a good idea. However, my friend was a bit upset about it.
Here's What My Facebook Friend Said
Let's just call him Ricky. This is what he wrote on Facebook:
The government, in its wisdom, has just banned trans-fat. They say that this will prevent 7,000 deaths a year! That's certainly a victory of some kind (beats me). But when you think about it, 7,000 people out of the US population of 321,043,000...that certainly is cause for concern and requires that we modify the diet of the entire country. We live in a mad world of Nazi Nannies and a government gone crazy.
Given that over 12,000 people a year die from orange sections (caught in their windpipe), we must now turn our attention to banning oranges.
First, he went Godwin. Because regulating food safety to stop people from dying so much is exactly like what the Nazis did. Then he switched to
reductio ad absurdum. If we ban trans-fats, let's just ban oranges, too.
And Here's How I Replied to Ricky
I felt like I couldn't just say, "Oh, stop with the bullshit." So I wrote something that was relatively long for a Facebook reply. Here it is:
1. It's not true that they were just banned. The trans-fat ban takes effect in 2018. You still have three years to work on giving yourself a heart attack.
2. Trans-fats are man-made; they're relatively rare in nature. To create them, what you have to do is take vegetable oil and blow hydrogen into it (which is called "hydrogrenation"). This turns it into a solid and gives it a longer shelf life. Think about Crisco -- that's what we're talking about. You spoon it out of the can, heat it up, and it turns liquid. Then you fry chicken (or whatever).
3. Trans-fats are blamed for 20,000 heart attacks per year (and 7,000 deaths). That's per year. So, in a decade, that's 200,000 heart attacks and 70,000 deaths. That's the bad news. The good news is Crisco has a long shelf-life. You can buy a can of Crisco and it won't turn rancid as quickly as, say, beef lard or bacon fat.
4. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the U.S. Banning trans-fats (a man-made invention which doesn't exist in significant quantities in nature) will bring down the number of heart attacks year after year after year.
5. Lead has been banned from both paint and gasoline long enough that we're now seeing an increase in IQs among children (because they're not ingesting lead). Seat belts and airbags have resulted in a significant decrease in traffic fatalities. In fact, some states now have higher death rates from firearms than from automobile accidents. And laws about not driving drunk or driving while talking on a cell phone have reduced death rates. Sometimes the government is the only large organization with the power to say, "Hey, don't do that!"
6. In 2014, about 2,600,000 Americans died from a huge variety of causes. Of those dead people, about 600,000 died from heart disease. If trans-fats contributed to 20,000 heart attacks, and we can lower that number significantly, maybe it 's a good thing.
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Yeah, Ricky, that darn nanny-state is so mean. Preventing us from driving drunk and breathing in lead fumes. And telling us not to eat trans-fats. What has happened to our freedom? Let's all move to Somalia, where there's no government to speak of. It's an Ayn Randian Libertarian dream.
He'll probably reply to me. Then I'll have to refute his arguments. But, like I said, he's an intelligent guy, so maybe he'll agree that I'm a little bit right. Or maybe his Facebook friends will recognize that sometimes government regulation is a good thing. I'm waiting to see what happens.