Trans fats tip of Orwellian iceberg (Column: 2/13/07)

If, as seems likely, avoidance is the typical American response when faced with a problem, overreaction is the typical American response when the problem can no longer be ignored. Case in point: trans fats.

Some astute nutritionists, especially those of unconventional persuasions, have been saying for some time that the likely culprit in coronary heart disease is not natural fats, saturated or otherwise, but unnatural ones, such as trans fats, as well as other industrially processed and refined foods. Small quantities of trans fats occur naturally in meats and dairy products, but these naturally-occurring fats have not been implicated in health problems.

The problematic fats are those created artificially by injecting hydrogen into vegetable oils to make them mimic the texture and behavior of naturally-occurring saturated fats. Crisco, for instance, is an artificially-created hydrogenated vegetable oil specifically intended to look and feel like lard. Now, ironically, it is turning out that lard is a good deal healthier for us than Crisco. This is a good example of why it pays to be skeptical of faddish health and dietary claims, and look to traditional foods and diets instead -- but I digress.

Now that it has been confirmed that trans fats are indeed a serious health risk, not only are restaurants and food manufacturers scrambling to find alternatives (some of which have their own problems associated with them), but many municipalities across the country are passing legislation to ban the use of trans fats.

That's where I draw the line.

For the record, I am very pleased that trans fats are being discredited. But I am not pleased that any time something appears to be bad for us, we pass laws to ban it. This kind of nanny-state mentality does us little credit, either as Americans or as humans. It should not be necessary to spell this out, but perhaps it is: freedom includes the freedom to make bad choices. Bad choices come with consequences, from which (hopefully, if we survive) we draw the experience to make better choices in the future.

Regulating every jot and tittle of our lives not only robs us of freedom, it robs us of the opportunity to learn and grow through our experiences. It moves us closer and closer to an Orwellian existence as automatons under the watchful eye of Big Brother, enjoying the last modicum of illusory freedom: the freedom to choose which corporate-controlled, government-approved channel to watch on our giant-screen plasma TVs.

I am exaggerating, of course, but maybe not by much. We see this nanny-statism all around us, and the trend seems to be growing. I don't smoke, in fact I strongly dislike smoking, but I'm still troubled by moves to ban smoking in all public places -- in some municipalities, even outdoors -- and if some radicals had their way, even inside private homes. I am troubled by plans to conduct body-mass indicator (BMI) tests on school-children and send the results home.

I am troubled by the response to the E. coli spinach scare, which is to recommend the creation of a massive new federal bureaucracy that will allegedly guarantee food safety (the same way the Feds guarantee border security, or success in Iraq?), rather than allowing people to make their own choices between industrially mass-produced and centrally-distributed foods, or local foods purchased from a trusted farmer.

And this is just a handful of the more prominent examples. Each of these can be defended, individually, on various grounds. But collectively, they add up to a massive invasion of our rights to privacy and self-determination. We are losing our freedom in the only way we can lose it: by passive acquiescence.

Lulled by high technology, labor-saving devices, and mind-numbing entertainment, Americans have gotten out of the habit of doing for themselves, and into the habit of expecting government to do it all for us: including make our decisions. And government, which by its very nature tends toward the ever more centralized and authoritarian, is all too willing to respond.

I hope I will not be found too irreverent if I paraphrase Martin Neimoeller's famous dictum: “They came for the smokers, and I did not speak, because I was not a smoker. They came for the junk-food eaters, and I did not speak, because I ate little junk food. They came for the trans-fat consumers, and I did not speak, because I avoid trans fats. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak.”