By Rebecca Christian
I can’t resist weighing in on the latest from California, where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has terminated restaurants’ use of evil trans fats. The thought of the ban working its way east kind of kills the Saturday morning joy of reaching for a glazed cruller, doesn’t it?Although California is the first state to enact such a ban, New York City’s similar ordinance went into effect July 1. The pun-loving New York Post hasn’t had so much fun since Gov. Eliot Spitzer got caught with his drawers down. Predicting that New Yorkers would thunder their thighs across the state line to transport pies for immoral purposes, the tabloid said bakers from “The Larden State” are eager to make more dough. For those who never got the news that cheesecake is fattening, New York also requires some restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus.I, for one, was glad to see Time refer to trans fats as “notorious artery- cloggers,” not because I am passionately anti-trans fats (I’m no more expert on the subject than the blogger who wondered if trans fats are transvestite fat cells who parade around in ladies’ panties). But I was happy to see somebody use “notorious” precisely. Some use it to mean merely famous, as in “Mother Teresa was notorious for her good works,” rather than widely and unfavorably known, as in “Al Capone was a notorious gangster.”I suppose the Governator has a point. Maybe my right to eat grease ends when your responsibility to pay for unclogging my arteries begins (via higher health care costs for all). The fundamental flaw is that the same thing will happen as when fat-free, sugar-free items hit grocery stores a decade ago, and the fluffy got fluffier thinking they could eat all the Snackwells devils food cookies they wanted. Trans fats- free doesn’t mean it’s good for you: Dunkin’ Donuts and KFC have both gone trans fat-free. Ban trans fats, and the stuff in them that makes foods – baked goods especially – taste wicked good has got to come from something else. You can bet your bippy it ain’t Brussels sprouts.Besides, where will it stop? At the insistence of Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley, a ban on restaurants serving foie gras (duck and goose liver) that he claims made the city a laughingstock has been rescinded. The ban started with animal rights advocates protesting the cruel way foie gras is made, by force feeding the fowl and not permitting them to exercise until their livers weigh up to three pounds. “Foie gras” translates as “Fatty Liver,” which sounds like what a mean widdle kid might call you on the playground, and is pronounced as “Fwah Grah.” (If you can say it, you ought to be able to eat it.) Anyway, what’s good for the goose is good for the glutton: eat enough foie gras and you, too, could die of a fatty liver. A memorable foie gras faux pas was perpetrated by Doug Sohn, of Hot Doug’s The Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium, who received a $250 ticket and all the publicity a hot dogger could want for serving foie gras on his franks.Televisions promote imbecility, credit cards promote debt and flip flops promote fallen arches. Why doesn’t the government ban them? Perhaps it’s because the task of saving people from themselves is inherently absurd. Consider the Iowa Legislature’s brilliant ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces. All except the gaming floors of casinos, which happen to give the state buckets of filthy lucre. There, you can still exercise your God-given right to blow smoke rings out of your tracheotomy any time you want.Christian is a former Dubuque resident who is a Des Moines-based writer and editor. She may be reached at [email protected]. On Wednesday, Aug. 13, Christian and her fellow TH columnist Katherine Fischer will appear as guests of the Dubuque Writers Guild at Isabella’s at 1375 Locust St. in Dubuque at 8 p.m. to read selections from a forthcoming book of their columns, which will be published by the TH. An open reading follows, and the public is welcome to attend.
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