A Christmas Cartoon

(via the Center for Consumer Freedom)

Save Lives: Bring Back Trans Fats!

Today The New York Times reports that obesity increases a person's chances of surviving various diseases:

Linking, for the first time, causes of death to specific weights, they report that overweight people have a lower death rate because they are much less likely to die from a grab bag of diseases that includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, infections and lung disease. And that lower risk is not counteracted by increased risks of dying from any other disease, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease.

As a consequence, the group from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute reports, there were more than 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight in 2004, the most recent year for which data were available, than would have expected if those people had been of normal weight.

Their paper is published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers also confirmed that obese people and people whose weights are below normal have higher death rates than people of normal weight. But, when they asked why, they found that the reasons were different for the different weight categories.

Wouldn't it be ironic if New York City's chief of the food police, Dr. Thomas Frieden, was actually responsible for increased mortality rates owing to his ban on trans-fats?

The Nanny Inquisition

The crusade continues, The New York Times reports:

Moonshine is the kind of cozy, lived-in Brooklyn bar that allowed customers to bring dogs inside and meat for the grill outside, both of which, it would come to learn, are against New York City health department regulations. But no one foresaw one violation uncovered during a recent surprise inspection of the Red Hook tavern.

It was tucked within the array of more common infractions on the inspectors’ forms for which Moonshine was cited: the grills, the “live dog” in the bar, fruit flies and “7 mice excreta” in the basement. If widely enforced, it is not an exaggeration to say that the rule would radically change the way thousands of bartenders do one small but vital part of their job every single day.

“A male worker observed having bare-hand contact with one slice of ready-to-eat lime while placing on top of beer bottle for patron in bar,” the citation, dated Oct. 9, states. Bare-hand contact? How else is a bartender supposed to get a ready-to-eat lime slice into a bottle of Corona for a patron? According to the health department, there are two solutions.

Plastic gloves or tongs.

In other words, every time a bartender in New York City puts a lime slice in that Corona with bare hands, he or she is breaking the law. ...

An informal survey of several bartenders on whether they use gloves or tongs when garnishing beer bottles was met with incredulity, ridicule and disdain. But when asked to perform this alien ritual, they did their best with the tongs, gripping the little wedges and guiding them into the bottles. Some fumbled, while others took to it like surgeons performing a transplant. None of them seemed happy with the thought of doing it every day.

The first stop was Smith & Wollensky, the revered brass-rail bar and steakhouse in Midtown where the staff wears sharp white coats. Patrick Ford, a bartender for 35 of his 53 years, was standing behind the polished bar amid gleaming bottles on a busy Tuesday night as he considered how to legally garnish a beer.

“I won’t wear gloves,” he said, his tall frame so thin it seemed his white coat was still on a hanger. “It’s not a doctor’s office. It’s a saloon.”

He fished out a Corona and looked around. “We don’t have tongs,” he said. “I’ll use a fork.”

He speared a little wedge of lime and walked past several amused regular customers, toward a waiting Corona. In his coat, holding the fruit before him, he looked like a mad scientist with a laboratory specimen. The lime addressed the lip of the beer bottle with uncertainty, but when Mr. Ford removed the fork, it stuck there. Men cheered.

“Hey, Patty,” one man bellowed. “Give me a Corona over here! Be sure to use a fork!”

While putting lime in beer borders on criminal, I believe the surgeon general recommends that anyone who would ban the practice be kept at least 100 yards away from any position of authority. It's just safer for everyone.

Around the Web

-- The New York Times is no johnny-come-lately on climate change. One of its first distress signals was printed way back in '95 -- 1895, that is!

-- Here's something as rare as a "smoking permitted" sign: The Wall Street Journal's Hugo Restall spends an entire column waxing rhapsodic on the joys of smoking.

-- The birthplace of Ebenezer Scrooge moves to ban Santa Claus.

-- Be proud: Your tax dollars are financing post-Thanksgiving congressional vacations to Brazil.

-- Councilman James Oddo, fresh from his long, lonely and hard-fought battle to ban metal baseball bats, has another big idea.

Around the Web

• Pat Buchanan actually writes something worth reading (even if Stephen Moore wrote much the same column only a few weeks ago).

• An anti-tobacco activist says New York City's health czar, Dr. Thomas Frieden, manipulates the science of second-hand smoke in the tradition of the infamous Tobacco Institute.

• Robert Gates continues his audition for the next Clinton Administration.

• The Center for Consumer Freedom's Rick Berman reports: "During the same time that health officials have placed increasing emphasis on obesity rates, the incidence of eating disorders has nearly tripled."

• A Johns Hopkins professor says claims of an obesity epidemic are "wildly exaggerated" and hurt children.

• A British editorial says a proposed regulation that will "warn" parents of obese "seem to assume a level of stupidity among the general public." It also has an intriguing suggestion for remedying obesity: "eat less and exercise more."

(hat tip to my pops & the Center for Consumer Freedom)

Selective Health Paternalism

From today's Best of the Web:

The Associated Press reports, "[San Francisco] health officials took steps Thursday toward opening the nation's first legal safe-injection room, where addicts could shoot up heroin, cocaine and other drugs under the supervision of nurses."

Meanwhile in Portland, Maine, the AP reports that "school officials on Thursday defended a decision to allow children as young as 11 to obtain birth-control pills at a middle-school health center."

In both San Francisco and Portland, however, smoking in bars is strictly prohibited. It's bad for your health, after all.

Meanwhile, in other health news:

-- Hillary Clinton makes fun of Americans for being fat.

-- New York City's Health Department will be visiting homes in Harlem to ensure nobody is smoking around children.

Gotham's Butter Cops Run Wild

The first fines in New York City have been issued for illegal possession of margarine. The so-called grace period, where restaurants received warnings as opposed to fines for use of trans fats, expired September 30th. From Oct. 1 through Oct. 5, 20 restaurants received trans-fats citations -- most for possession.

The Post reports:

The fines ranged from $200 to $2,000, and all the restaurant owners are entitled to challenge the summonses at hearings.

Nearly all of the ticketed eateries were cited for using trans-fat-laden margarine.

Only one, Ballato on East Houston Street, which has hosted the likes of Sophia Loren, Roberto Benigni and Daniel Day-Lewis, was cited for using oils that lacked proper labels about the trans-fat content.

In other words, it's now illegal to possess unlabeled containers of oil. So much for those exotic, high-end olive oils retailed in ornate bottles -- too much work for the food cops to determine whether the law is being broken.

Owner Emilio Vitolo said he'll fight the summons because the oil in question was peanut oil -- one that doesn't contain the offending fats. He insisted that he never uses trans fats in preparing his meals.

Workers at nearly every restaurant contacted by The Post said the infractions were for stray containers of spreads or oils that hadn't been tossed out -- and they insisted their cooking is trans-fat-free.

"I didn't know [the new rules] applied to bakeries as of yet," said Rajandra Mahase, owner of Little Guyana Bake Shop in Queens.

That's also news to the Health Department -- from a recent press release: "This first phase of the regulation applies to oils, shortening and margarines used for frying and as spreads. It does not apply to baked goods or prepared foods, or to oils used to deep-fry dough or cake batter. Those products are covered by the second phase of the initiative, which takes effect on July 1, 2008."

And all this while the science behind the ban is dubious at best.

Dr. Frieden, Call Your Office

New York City may have already sicced its food cops on anyone using trans-fats, but according to a new report, that may have been premature. John Tierney reports in yesterday's New York Times:

In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to his office’s famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop announced that the American diet was a problem of “comparable” magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.

He introduced his report with these words: “The depth of the science base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964.”

That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new book meticulously debunking diet myths, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (Knopf, 2007). The notion that fatty foods shorten your life began as a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data; when scientists tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The evidence against Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against Marlboros.

Read the whole thing. It's a fascinating take on how one myth can cascade into conventional wisdom. This seems to be exactly what's happened with fears of secondhand smoke.

Picture of the Day

Fact of the Day: It's possible to smoke, drink AND eat trans fats, while still living a long, healthy, happy life. One-hundred-year-old Winnie Langley is case in point.

(Hat tip to Karol)

'Bad Habits Fuel Longevity'

Perhaps Mayor Bloomberg and his health czar, Thomas Frieden, can hire Zhang Shuqing to head up a new outreach program. China Daily explains:

Zhang Shuqing, a centenarian in Pixian, Sichuan, has his own secret for long life - smoking every day and drinking liquor after every meal.

Zhang, whose daughter died eight years ago, turned 100 on May 7. He lives with his nephew Zhang Chenggui.

Zhang senior said he started smoking and drinking strong liquor when he was in his early 20s. Since then, he has smoked every day and taken a drink with every meal.

According to his grandson Xu, Zhang has consumed 15 tons of liquor and more than a ton of tobacco in his lifetime.

Zhang, who is in good health, has a huge appetite, with a standard meal comprising two chicken legs, a bowl of steamed pork fat and glutinous rice, vegetables and fruit. And he eats the lot in less than 20 minutes.

(Via Fark)

Un-Effing-Believable

From The Corner:

Oh, Yes, That's What Bothers Me So About This Whole Spectacle [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

From the Telegraph:

The only wry smile to be derived from the humiliating circumstances in which our 15 sailors and Royal Marines were captured by just six Iranians came from the comment by Patricia Hewitt. "It was deplorable," pronounced our tight-lipped Health Secretary, "that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people."

(h/t: Karol)

France's Fog of Virtue

From this week's National Review:

A nationwide smoking ban went into effect in France, yet another blow to the stereotype of the French as a nation of louche but intellectual libertines, Jeanne Moreau and Alain Delon lounging in bed discussing Heidegger through a fog of cigarette smoke.

Before the health nuts tighten their grip on La Belle France to a stranglehold, though, we should like to remind everyone that the oldest person who ever lived -- at any rate, whose dates of birth and death are so chronicled that no one could doubt her age -- was a Frenchwoman, Jeanne Calment of Arles, who lives to be 122; and that Calment was -- gasp! -- a lifelong cigarette smoker.

Well, not quite lifelong: She actually quit at age 117, being then blind and too proud to ask people to light her cigarettes for her. After her 118th birthday, however, she resumed the habit. Calment died in 1997, leaving behind a faint whiff of cigarette smoke and a world from which the pleasures of tobacco are being methodically routed. God bless Calment, wherever she is, and may health nuts everywhere -- but especially in France -- choke on their own preening virtue.