Limiting Fat - Free Market Style
October 17th, 2006 by Kevin WoodDisney will begin to limit, “the calorie, fat and sugar it will allow in packaged foods it markets to children using the faces of Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters.”
This comes a few weeks after the New York City Health Department has proposed “an amendment to the Health Code that would phase-out artificial trans fat in all NYC restaurants and other food service establishments.”
Disney is taking the free market step towards healthier diets that NYC is attempting to regulate. Should laws be the ultimate decision maker in your diet? Or should you be able to make the choice?
October 17th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Three cheers for Disneys market-based move, but I also think the New York ban on trans-fats is totally appropriate. There is no level of safe trans-fat consumption; at any level they are bad for you. Trans-fats are artificial and a relatively new innovation and are easily replaced by other kinds of saturated and non-saturated fats; they can and should be completely removed from the food chain. The loss of liberty (the opportunity to consume a heart-attack inducing fat easily replaced by other fats) is relatively small compared to the risk to health.