Ban the Fat!

Step up to the Plate. Ban the Fat.

This weekend on my radio program, a diverse group of individuals weighed in on the proposition that we follow New York City, and very soon Chicago as well, to ban the use of trans fats in restaurants throughout the municipality of Pittsburgh.

The voices represented through interviews, oral and written, as well as direct call-ins spanned everyone from a US Congressman, former city executive, Director of Food Service, corporate Chef for Big Burrito Restaurants, and the Allegheny county moms and dads who made their voices heard on the air.

From every level, the only surprise was their uniformity. Despite our typical Pittsburgh turf-bound regional wrangling, I heard none of the messy mix of special interests, hemming, hawing, and hand-wringing over what to do. Rather, it was a chorus of concern with a tight focus around the harmful nature of these fats in our foods and the recognition that their elimination is positive for us as individuals, as families, and as a city.

Pittsburgh should the step up to the plate. Ban the fat.

We know the data. Trans fats kill an estimated 30,000 per year in heart related deaths, and are even worse than saturated fats for your heart and health. Given this clear and present public health hazard that looms within the enlarging shadow of our obesity epidemic, why not just replace those oils with healthier ones? What could be more obvious and important than providing sustenance that doesn’t also happen to contribute to your death?

The loudest antagonist of this no-duh solution is the restaurant industry, which moans that it’s too hard, no one will like the food, and it’s too expensive. But KFC and Wendy’s are going trans fat free already, Oreo has already made its signature cookie trans fat free without incident, and the Big Burrito restaurant group is proactively ridding their foods of trans fats with no sacrifice of flavor.

In fact, the problem is not the price of your food, the bother of the change-over to healthier products, and certainly not the flavor of the trans fat foods with the shelf life of plastic. The real problem with ridding foods of heart-harming oils is more fundamental. It comes from that kernel, lodged deep within each of our foot-stomping, you’re-not-the-boss-of-me Libertarian hearts, that screams that no one can tell us what to do.

That same rhetorical antic made people rebel against the seat belt law that has saved thousands of lives, the sale of cigarettes to children, and most recently the helmet law.

But when the public health cost – our costs – reaches into the billions of dollars in preventable health expenses every year, the issue goes beyond the individual, if that weren’t enough. The bill for these expenses is reflected back onto us all in increased insurance premiums, making it a problem for our person, our family, AND our pocketbooks.

It’s time to step up to the plate. Ban the fat.

If we can do this, we will save lives and Pittsburgh will show ourselves to be proactive, rather than reactive; guided by principle, rather than dragged along by necessity; and a far-sighted city that can make forward thinking health decisions for our people.

Will Clower