From the WSJ Opinion Archives
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Big Brother Is Weight Watching
New York City bans trans fats and tracks down diabetics.
"Big Brother," "Orwellian," "Nanny state"--all those words were on the lips of New Yorkers this week after the local Board of Health proposed banning most so-called trans fats from the city's more than 20,000 eateries. The targeted fatty acids are produced when vegetable oil is solidified with hydrogen--for frying foods or making baked goods, among other things. They can raise levels of "bad" cholesterol. Even health officials can't honestly claim that trans fats are a major cause of heart and artery problems. They are the demon du jour, however, and the overlords of New York seem bent on saving us from them.
If the current proposal actually becomes law, every outlet from the fanciest restaurant to the smallest pizza parlor will have 18 months to find substitutes for trans fat-producing hydrogenated oils. These oils figure in thousands of recipes, in part because they produce familiar good tastes and textures but also because the oils don't get rancid quickly.
Once the city fathers are done telling restaurants what they can serve, though, who is to say that they won't come after us by a more direct route? The idea is not that far-fetched. Early this year, the city quietly added diabetes, a chronic, noninfectious condition, to a list of communicable diseases that it tracks, such as syphilis.
Now, when labs detect a high blood-sugar level in a sample, they are required by law to report that finding to officials. If you thought the results of a diabetes test were between you and your doctor, think again. The city records the fact that you, personally, have developed diabetes, and authorities are empowered to monitor your treatment and even to conduct what it calls "interventions." Perhaps you will soon get a knock on the door from a city worker wanting to know if you are sticking to your prescribed regimen for dealing with a host of chronic conditions.
Undeniably New York, like other cities, is worried about the cost--in health-care bills and social problems--of an explosion of diabetes cases, which are often linked to obesity. Authorities are casting about for ways to make potential patients look after themselves. This month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed a formal report from a city commission suggesting that New York consider offering money to poor people who make regular visits to a doctor, as an incentive for them to stay healthy.
At least no one would be forced to take the money, and the proposal has the whiff of a market solution. The market is at least no worse at getting people to do things than government is. If we ask for "health food"--organic, low in sodium, high in antioxidants, whatever--someone will make it. If manufacturers tout their food as healthier, somebody will buy it.
The trouble is that few foods are healthy if you eat too much of them. The label "no cholesterol" or "low fat" is not the ticket to dietary success that many of us want to believe. The best way to eat healthy is to count calories. But reducing one's intake of trans fats is so much easier--especially if no one is allowed to serve them--that it's tempting for everyone, including consumer health groups, to focus on this sort of fad and not on the boring old adage about doing everything in moderation.
Yet calorie counting has stood the test of time. A sad sidebar to the New York story is that when health activists targeted saturated fats in the 1980s, food purveyors replaced things like beef tallow with vegetable oils, and everybody cheered. Who knew that today, hydrogenated oils and their trans fats would be labeled toxic killers?
