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Jewish World Review Jan. 8, 2007 / 18 Teves, 5767 Trans fat monkey on my back By Tom Purcell
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
This is hard for me to admit publicly: I'm addicted to trans fats.
My addiction started innocently enough. I loved butter. I used it generously on toast and in recipes of every kind. I loved lard, too, and smattered my skillet with it every time I made eggs or pancakes.
But the experts got to me.
They said animal-based fats were bad for me — that they'd clog my arteries and send me to an early grave. What's worse, they said, is that innocent animals were being slaughtered to feed my vile habit.
They told me to eat margarine instead, a butter substitute usually made from vegetable oil. It wasn't easy at first — the older butter substitutes didn't taste very good. But over time, margarine improved. I came to love it better than the real thing.
Now the experts are telling me not to eat margarine.
As it goes, most margarine is made from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Hydrogenation adds hydrogen atoms to the oil. The process makes the oil harder and less rancid and dramatically increases its shelf life.
But hydrogenation also causes a portion of the converted oil to become trans fats — nasty little molecules that have an uncanny ability to stick to artery walls. A number of respectable studies found a correlation between trans fat consumption and heart disease.
Some advocacy groups jumped on the news. They filed lawsuits demanding that fast food joints cut trans fats from their recipes. They pressured government bodies to ban their use.
The advocacy groups have been successful. Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wendy's and Starbucks vowed to reduce trans fats. New York City banned their use in restaurants within all five boroughs.
And now I'm addicted — addicted to the latest forbidden fruit to be vilified across the airwaves.
I wake nights in a cold sweat. In my slippers and pajamas, I walk to the car. I drive to the convenience store. I stand for hours near the heated rollers in the back of the room. I watch the hot dogs and mini tacos roll round and round.
And then I begin to binge.
I eat everything sitting on those hot rollers. Then I move toward the potato-chip aisle and begin eating. I keep eating until all the Pringles, Doritos and Cheetos are gone.
Then I move into the baked-goods aisle, the finest aisle in the store. I devour Twinkies and Ding Dongs and deep-fried Dolly Madison pies. I gorge myself until a sugar rush overcomes me — until I black out. I wake in a damp alley, candy wrappers about the pavement, the sun just coming up.
I need help, I know. But I'm not alone. The whole world's gone insane. Sure, trans fats are bad for us. A lot of things are that way. A sane man would eat them in moderation or avoid them altogether — or use a safe trans fat product, which a couple of scientists recently claimed to invent.
In a sane world, food providers, even restaurants, would be required to fully disclose what is in their products. Consumers should have full knowledge of what they are about to put into their bodies. And consumers should be able to freely choose whatever they want to eat.
But that is how we'd go about it in a free society. Instead, we're yielding to a small group of people who want to decide what the rest of us should eat — who want to force their will on us for our own good.
They have driven me to addiction.
The truth be told, my illness began when the same people ran Olestra out of town. Olestra was an engineered fat that the human body was unable to absorb. Sure, some people had digestive tract problems, but most of us could eat as much as we wanted and not gain a pound.
What a free and spirited country America was until then. As Jay Leno said, only a country like ours would try to invent fake fat.
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© 2007, Tom Purcell |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
