Testimony to NYC on Trans Fat Ban

Written by Audrey Silk and Linda Stewart
 

Though I am the founder of a smokers' rights group based in NYC we have always argued that our position is less about smoking and more about the loss of civil liberties, the encroachment of the nanny state, infringement on private property rights, and all things of that nature including, now, this proposal to ban trans fat.

Many take the position that this proposal is "finally going too far."

Smoking bans are not a different or unique animal.  It was the allowance and tolerance and even the welcoming of them that puts us in the position we're in now.  It is one and the same.  That's where many seem to go wrong.  The slippery slope doesn't start now, it started then.  And we've been screaming for years that food will be next!


 
 
**Media Alert**
Post Testimonial Addition

Covered here is the rebuttal to the naive claims that another way the trans fat ban is not comparable to smoking bans is that "no one is harmed by someone else eating a hamburger." 

Apparently the history of the anti-smoker campaigners have taught you nothing or you haven't been paying attention.  The anti-fatties have lifted "secondhand food" (and cost!) from the anti-smoker playbook.  It's only a matter of time (and allowed by your ignorant acceptance of the first step)... Read on....

 
In August of 2005 I warned Chuck Hunt (NYC chapter head of the state restaurant association) that he shouldn't be so agreeable to Health Commissioner Frieden's request to voluntarily eliminate trans fat because when no one volunteers he will mandate it by law!

We begged everyone to get over the blind belief that the smoking bans are to "protect" nonsmokers from the alleged harm of "secondhand smoke."  The anti-smoking crusaders have said all along that their goal is a smoke-free society and that bans are a way to modify the (legal!) behavior they don't approve of  -- to "denormalize" smoking.

Simply put, smoking bans are to "save people from themselves" the exact same way this trans fat ban is to "save people from themselves."

When the smoking bans were accepted, that was the green light to the health police that the public would offer little resistance to their controlling other areas of our lives "for their own good."  Not only that, indeed you are applying the same brand of junk science to do it.

Your premises on both the role of Public Health and the extraordinary and singular ''danger" of transfat are sorrily mistaken.

For openers, your job is not  to make sure that our "dining" is "healthy."  And, by the way,  "healthy" according to whom?

Almost annually the government has seemed to change its mind about what's a 'healthy diet."
Bad enough that the public has been led and misled with a shifting kaleidoscope of false Do's and Don'ts-- which at least we've  been able to take with a grain of salt-- but now you apparently want to cram them down our throats.

Your second presumption is much more alarming.

You invent for Public Health a role and a power that it's never historically had (and never ought to have) and imperially inform us that you're "charged with... preventing chronic diseases through approaches that may address individual behavior..."  No you're not!  You just made that up.  And we'll thank you to keep your paws off our "individual behavior" as well as what you call  our "community environment." That's not Public Heath. That's social engineering. Eliminating choice and coercing behavior is not The American Way.

As for transfats themselves, you overestimate their associative connection to disease,  and similarly their percentage in the average diet.
 

    ¶  According to The National Academy of Sciences, the DHHS, the National Heart Lung & Blood Institute, and even the FDA, "transfats are on a par with saturated fats."   No better, no worse. And, inconveniently, there's this:
 

    ¶ "Americans eat 4 times as much saturated fat as transfat." according to the NY Times,  though the FDA itself says the ratio is far greater: 5 to 1.
 

Then too, the bulk of your exaggerated premise relies almost solely on epidemiology-- a crude tool at best for determining association (let alone causation) for diseases with a known multiplicity of causes.

An overload of trans or saturated fats may raise cholesterol in some people, which may-- or may not-- be one of the over 200 known or suspected  contributors to  heart disease.  And yes, it's your job to tell that, fairly and squarely, to the public.  But, in any case,  pretending that a plate of French fries is a bullet to the heart--  let alone 'toxic" "poison" analogous to lead--  is just sheer hyperbole.
 

Finally, as you know,  trans fats occur naturally in foods eaten much more frequently than fries, where they're also accompanied by saturated fats.  And since your lust for engineering is apparently unrestrained, it's really a no-brainer that next you'll be attempting to banish Eggs Benedict and mandate --perhaps by cubic centimeters-- the portion-size of a steak.   And in the course in improving "the food environment" (which has to include stores) what-- aside from the Commerce Clause, which is recently scorned anyway-- would stop you from controlling what we buy in the market?  Any job worth doing is worth doing well.
 

And finally (really) the very language of this Law shows the bloodlessness and joylessness of the Health Department's sterile and medicinal view of life. Food isn't medicine. And yet, with a stroke of your bureaucratic pens, you manage to reduce the whole playground of eating (noshing! snacking! dining! feasting!) to the clinical concept of "food intake," and restaurants (delis! bistros! cafes!) to "the food environment."

Your approach to Public Health shows contempt for the public, contempt for the marketplace,  contempt for the principles of autonomy and choice.  Our bodies aren't (yet) the property of the State-- nor (yet) of the city.


The aforementioned testimony was a collaborative effort between NYC C.L.A.S.H. Founder Audrey Silk
and ranking member Linda Stewart, and delivered by Audrey Silk.

In addition, each author's original contribution was shortened to meet the testimony time allotted.
The full and original versions of each follow:


(Audrey Silk's portion of the testimony was derived from a letter she wrote to FOX News Channel Legal Analyst Lis Wiehl in response to her column "Drawing the Line at the French Fry"):

Dear Lis,

Though I am the founder of a smokers' rights group based in NYC we have always argued that our position is less about smoking and more about the loss of civil liberties, the encroachment of the nanny state, infringement on private property rights, and all things of that nature including now this proposal to ban trans fat.  The thought of it alone could be considered a risk to my health as I feel all that's physically associated with becoming angry as hell.

So of course I find your recent opinion piece a welcome addition and thank you for it.  However, it has its fatal flaws that I'd like you to consider.

Like many other pundits have done as well, you take the position that this proposal is "finally going too far."  Or as you put it: "So, I support a ban on public smoking because passive smoke harms nonsmokers, but I have to draw the line at the French fry."

I beg you to rethink this because this is why you find yourself needing to write such a defensive column now.  Smoking bans are not a different or unique animal.  It was the allowance and tolerance and even the welcoming of them that puts us in the position we're in now.  It is one and the same.  That's where you and many others seem to go wrong.  The slippery slope doesn't start now (as one other wrote), it started then.  And we've been screaming for years that food will be next!

In August of 2005 I warned our state restaurant association NYC chapter head that he shouldn't be so agreeable to Health Commissioner Frieden's request to voluntarily eliminate trans fat because when no one volunteers he will mandate it by law! (1) There's even one prominent tobacco control researcher (Dr. Michael Siegel of Boston University) who admits, on his blog, that when smokers' rights people used to say these things he thought they were crazy but now sees we were right. (2) (And by the way, one of the sources listed at the bottom of your piece -- ASH -- is criticized heavily by Dr. Siegel as being "fanatical" and ruinous to legitimate "tobacco control" efforts).

Everyone needs to get over the blind belief that the smoking bans are to "protect" nonsmokers from the alleged harm of "secondhand smoke."  The anti-smoking crusaders have said all along that their goal is a smoke-free society and that bans are a way to modify the (legal!) behavior they don't approve of  -- to "denormalize" smoking and to equate less "in the public eye" smoking with "social unacceptability."  To quote from Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights: "The most important reason we need to protect [smoking bans at the local level] is that it supports our larger goal: societal rejection of tobacco use.  All this helps change social norms and attitudes; bringing us closer to our ultimate goal of a smokefree society." (3)

Simply put, smoking bans are to "save people from themselves" the exact same way this trans fat ban is to "save people from themselves."  No.  Stop.  Do not protest that smoking is "different."  When tobacco becomes illegal then you can argue that.  And people can quit smoking if they truly want to.  They do it all the time.  Until then, based on the equally applied principle, it is legal and it's a personal choice.  You must look at each from that perspective.

When the smoking bans were/are accepted, that was the green light to the health police that the public would offer little resistance to their controlling other areas of our lives "for their own good."  Not only that, indeed they are applying the same brand of junk science to do it. (4,5,6,7)

I'm compelled to offer some evidence that the "science" of secondhand smoke is nothing more than advocacy science and was dreamed up (brilliantly, I might add) as a tool to push their agenda into another realm.  I offer this for you to consider:

When NYC Mayor Bloomberg claimed his ban would save one thousand workers' lives, the president of the American Council on Science and Health (who vehemently opposes smoking) wrote, "There is no evidence that any New Yorker — patron or employee — has ever died as a result of exposure to smoke in a bar or restaurant." (8)  Dr. Richard Doll, the scientist who first linked active smoking to lung cancer, said in a 2001 radio interview, "The effects of other people smoking in my presence is so small it doesn't worry me." (9)  In 2003 the British Medical Journal published the largest study ever done on environmental tobacco smoke and found that there was no link between it and lung cancer and heart disease.(10,11)  And regardless of the most recent declaration by the U.S. Surgeon General, it was (admittedly) not a new "study."  It was the same old weak studies repackaged, put on new paper, and given the head health guy's imprimatur.(12,13,14,15,16)

But to return to your rightfully stated premise that we don't need government to micromanage our lives and that each of us can manage our own lives, I offer that the same could apply to smoking without having to ban it everywhere.  Let the market drive the need and the owners left to decide. It will work itself out where some places will allow smoking and even more places won't.  And we can all manage to stay out of places we don't feel comfortable -- employees included.  Agreed?

Just like choosing our fries!  If one cares about trans fat they can ask if it's in the food being served.  And the rest of us can be free to not care if we want... and enjoy a good tasting and satisfying fry.

The smoking ban issue wasn't the exception.  It was the beginning of the end.

Thank you for listening.

Sincerely,
Audrey Silk
Founder, NYC C.L.A.S.H. (Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment)
(and 2005 NYC Mayoral Candidate)
P.O. Box 1036
Brooklyn, NY 11234
(917) 888-9317
 

 Footnotes

(1) Email excerpts from and to Audrey Silk and Chuck Hunt, August 12-14, 2005 (Due to privacy concerns, only available upon request)

(2) "The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary," Dr. Michael Siegel
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com

(3) "Preemption: Tobacco Control's #1 Enemy," American for Nonsmokers' Rights, August 2004
http://www.protectlocalcontrol.org/resources/res_detail.cfm?res_type=1&res_id=42

(4) "Going in Circles, Precautionary Style," Jeff Stier, Health Facts & Fears, American Council on Science and Health, February 14, 2005
http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.504/news_detail.asp

(5) "Faster, CNN, Kill! Kill!," Todd Seavey, Health Facts & Fears, American Council on Science and Health, July 9, 2002
http://healthfactsandfears.net/factsfears/newsID.278/news_detail.asp

(6) "The Skinny on Fat," Sandy Szwarc, Tech Central Station, July 16, 2003
http://www.techcentralstation.com/071603B.html

(7) "The Panic Du Jour: Trans Fat in Foods," Gina Kolata, NY Times, August 14, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/weekinreview/14kola.html?ex=1160625600&en=aa3c558783c0a7c0&ei=5070

(8) "Mayor Bloomberg Exaggerates Secondhand Smoke Risk," Elizabeth Whelan, Health Facts & Fears, American Council on Science and Health, December 12, 2002
http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.215/news_detail.asp

(9) Sir Richard Doll, 2001; interview on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3826939.stm

(10) "Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98," Drs. James E. Enstrom and Geoffrey C. Kabat, British Medical Journal, May 17, 2003
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057

(11) "Defending Legitimate Epidemiologic Research," Dr. James E. Enstrom, Scientific Integrity Institute, September 20, 2006
http://www.scientificintegrityinstitute.com/defense.html

(12) "Secondhand Smoke: The Debate Isn't Over," NYC C.L.A.S.H. Press Release, June 30, 2006
http://www.eisinc.com/release/storiesh/NYCCIT.002.html

(13) "Killing the passive smoking debate," Michael Fumento, Townhall.com, June 29, 2006
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/Michael%20Fumento/2006/06/29/203050.html

(14) "A Pack of Lies. The surgeon general hypes the hazards of secondhand smoke," Jacob Sullum, Reason Online, July 5, 2006
http://www.reason.com/sullum/070506.shtml

(15) "The science is not in," Jacob Sullum, USA Today, June 27, 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-06-27-opposing-view_x.htm

(16) "Surgeon General's Report Blows Smoke," Elizabeth Whelan, Health Facts & Fears, American Council on Science and Health, July 14, 2006
http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.800/news_detail.asp
 


(Linda Stewart's complete testimony submitted in writing to the NYC Dept. of Health prior to the date of the hearing):

"And if we ban trans fats, we move one step closer to endorsing the principle that government should determine what we eat and how we should live - even when the data are skimpy and the expected benefits nonexistent.
--Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan

Gentlemen:

Your premises on both the role of Public Health and the extraordinary and singular ''danger" of transfat are sorrily mistaken.

For openers, your job is not to make sure that our "dining" is "healthy."  And, by the way, "healthy" according to whom?

Almost annually the government has seemed to change its mind about what's a 'healthy diet" :

    ¶ Margarine, it once decreed, was  a health food; carbohydrates were slimming; salt, of which a deficiency has apparently been related to chronic fatigue syndrome, was-- or is it still?-- the  Very Devil Incarnate.

And, venturing further into  Medical Expertise:

    ¶ Hormone replacement was pushed for 30 years as preventing, among other things, heart disease and stroke... until (oops) we were suddenly told that it triggers both.   Vitamins have been touted for years as preventing cancer.. till a few years later when (oops)  they cause it.  High fiber prevented...oops, never mind.

Bad enough that the public has been led and misled with a shifting kaleidoscope of false Do's and Don'ts-- which at least we've  been able to take with a grain of salt-- but now you apparently want to cram them down our throats.

Your second presumption is much more alarming.

You invent for Public Health a role and a power that it's never historically had (and never ought to have) and imperially inform us that you're "charged with... preventing chronic diseases through approaches that may address individual behavior..." No you're not!  You just made that up.  And we'll thank you to keep your paws off our "individual behavior" as well as what you call  our "community environment." That's not Public Heath. That's social engineering. Eliminating choice and coercing behavior is not The American Way; it's the Maoist Way.

As for transfats themselves, you overestimate their associative connection to disease,  and similarly their percentage in the average diet.
 

    ¶  According to The National Academy of Sciences, the DHHS, the National Heart Lung & Blood Institute, and even the FDA, "transfats are on a par with saturated fats."   No better, no worse. And, inconveniently, there's this:
 

    ¶ "Americans eat 4 times as much saturated fat as transfat." according to the NY Times,  though the FDA itself says the ratio is far greater: 5 to 1.
 

Then too, the bulk of your exaggerated premise relies almost solely on epidemiology-- a crude tool at best for determining association (let alone causation) for diseases with a known multiplicity of causes. A problem that's made exponentially worse when the tweaked RRs are both statistically insignificant and weak --under 2 or 3-- to begin with.  And, in fact,  when the resultant risks are this small, confounding and bias are the likely explanations, and "bias" includes the researchers' bias-- a penchant  to bolster the premise-of-the-week, and to bask in consensus. A consensus often reached by ignoring any research or studies to the contrary.
 

¶ The Scottish Heart Study (Bolten-Smith et al, 1997) concluded  that "the results do not support a major effect of dietary transfatty acids..."
 

¶ The Framingham Heart Study (1948-1998) concluded that high cholesterol wasn't associated with increased heart disease after age 47-- after which age, "For each 1 mg/dl drop in cholesterol, there was an 11% increase in coronary and total mortality.'
 

¶  A study conducted at Stanford University's School of Medicine (Jeppesen et al, 1997) reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that low fat diets were actually harmful to adult women-- raising triglycerides and lowering HDL.
 

¶ Clinical trials reported in the European Heart Journal ( Corr et al, 1997 ) led to a conclusion that "Dietary advice to reduce saturated fat and cholesterol intake, even combined with intervention to reduce other risk factors,  appears to be relatively ineffective for the primary prevention of CHD and has not been shown to reduce mortality."
 

¶ The head of the American Heart Assn Nutrition Committee, Dr. Ronald Krauss, admitted that based on the majority of studies "for two-thirds of consumers, low-fat diets increased the risk of heart disease or didn't help them."
 

¶ Chairman of Wayne State University's Nutrition Dept, Dr. David Klurfeld, wrote in 1999 that any association between transfats and heart disease was notably too weak for conclusions to be reached.
 

So where does that leave the "science"? An overload of trans or saturated fats may raise cholesterol in some people, which may-- or may not-- be one of the over 200 known or suspected  contributors to  heart disease.  And yes, it's your job to tell that, fairly and squarely, to the public.  But, in any case,  pretending that a plate of French fries is a bullet to the heart--  let alone 'toxic" "poison" analogous to lead--  is just sheer hyperbole.

Finally, as you know,  trans fats occur naturally in foods eaten much more frequently than fries, where they're also accompanied by saturated fats.  And since your lust for engineering is apparently unrestrained, it's really a no-brainer that next you'll be attempting to banish Eggs Benedict and mandate --perhaps by cubic centimeters-- the portion-size of a steak.   And in the course in improving "the food environment" (which has to include stores) what-- aside from the Commerce Clause, which is recently scorned anyway-- would stop you from controlling what we buy in the market?  Any job worth doing is worth doing well.

And finally (really) the very language of this Law shows the bloodlessness and joylessness of the Health Department's sterile and medicinal view of life. Food isn't medicine. And yet, with a stroke of your bureaucratic pens, you manage to reduce the whole playground of eating (noshing! snacking! dining! feasting!) to the clinical  concept of "food intake," and restaurants (delis! bistros! cafes!) to "the food environment." Bah! and faugh!

Your approach to Public Health shows contempt for the public, contempt for the marketplace,  contempt for the principles of autonomy and choice.  Our bodies aren't (yet) the property of the State-- nor (yet) of the city.
 

Linda Stewart
NY NY 10021
 

I have no connection with the restaurant industry, the food industry, or the transfat industry, but I did spend the night at a Holiday Inn.
 

Additional sources;
Gina Kolata, NY Times,  9/28/06; "The Skinny on Fat," Sandy Swarc, Tech Central Station, 7/16/03; 'Low Fat Myth Busted," Steven Milloy (Cato) Fox News, 2/9/06 and 'Kooky Cookie Lawsuit," Milloy, Ibid, 5/16/03; "Fear of Margarine," Milloy, junkscience.com, 11/99




THERE IS SUCH A THING AS "SECONDHAND FOOD"!

The following was a letter to a state legislator in response to his claim that one cannot compare smoking bans to food bans because there is no such thing as "secondhand eating."
 

Dear Representative Neal,

Within the content of the Associated Press article regarding the defeat of the proposed smoking ban in South Carolina was this:

Rep. Bill Sandifer, R-Seneca, called it a "slippery slope to try to protect everyone from themselves." He said arguments for barring smoking could be used to ban fattening food in restaurants.

That analogy doesn't work because there's no such thing as secondhand eating, said Rep. Joseph Neal, D-Hopkins.


Mr. Neal, either you genuinely believe that (having been duped by the anti-smokers) or you are a member of the anti-smoking crusade and reading from the script.  I hope it's the former so that you're willing to accept evidence to the contrary that you might not be aware of.

First, you'd be right that the analogy is off (though not as much as you think when it's applied to adults who can choose not to patronize or work in places that allow smoking) IF smoking bans were about "protecting" non-smokers.  They're ultimately not.  They're about controlling a legal behavior through force of law.

The way to control smokers was to say they were hurting non-smokers.  Hence, the birth of the behavior modification tool "secondhand smoke."

The way to control the overweight will be to say they were influencing others to overeat or eat badly.  Hence, the birth of the behavior modification tool "secondhand food."

So, in fact, the analogy you say doesn't work, does.  All it will take is a little more campaigning by the anti-fat crusaders.  It took the anti-smokers 20 years to reach the point where men like you believe that "secondhand" smoke is something only a fool would dismiss.  They've broken the ice and it will take much less time for the anti-fat crusaders to brainwash the public into believing that "something must be done!" about "secondhand" food... and anyone who questions it is a fool.

And here is the proof:

Secondhand Food!
Exposure to Food Increases Brain Metabolism
Same area of brain affected as seen in drug-addiction studies

UPTON, NY— Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have produced new evidence that brain circuits involved in drug addiction are also activated by the desire for food. The mere display of food — smelling and tasting favorite foods without actually eating them — causes increases in metabolism throughout the brain. Increases of metabolism in the right orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region that controls drive and pleasure, also correlate strongly with self-reports of desire for food and hunger.  “These results could explain the deleterious effects of constant exposure to food stimuli, such as advertising, candy machines, food channels, and food displays in stores,” says Brookhaven physician Gene-Jack Wang, the study’s lead author. “The high sensitivity of this brain region to food stimuli, coupled with the huge number and variety of these stimuli in the environment, likely contributes to the epidemic of obesity in this country.” The study appears in the April 2004 issue of NeuroImage.

Aside from the fact that this study in itself reads like something from a sci-fi satire, and aside from it's (ostensible) proof that food itself is as addictive as cocaine, I think we now have the tip of a jackboot through the door to the dangers of (yes!) secondhand food!   After all, if the mere sight and smell of food is proven to (duh) stimulate hunger and --cause people to... eat!-- and thus to grow dangerously and disgustingly obese!-- should people be allowed to eat in public? Can 900 lb Aunt Murgatroid's cancer and clogged arteries actually be blamed on her living right next to an outdoor cafe and being forced to constantly and daily... witness food?
 

"Secondhand" Costs!

Indoctrinization of the word "secondhand" to be immediately associated with "bad" -- and that whatever it is, you didn't ask for it and should seek the heads of the invaders -- is what's at the root of the mind game being played on you by the nannies.

'A second chance at life'

Experts call obesity a neglected epidemic that has left virtually no demographic group untouched.

Even women wearing size-6 jeans pay the price. Here's why: The health-care costs of obese American adults amount to an estimated $90 billion annually, driving up expenses for anyone with a health-insurance policy - or for anyone who pays taxes.

"It's like secondhand smoking," said Morgan Downey, executive director of the American Obesity Association. "You don't have to be obese to be affected."


So dear Representative Neal, the anti-fatties themselves make the analogy you say doesn't work.  You know why?  Because the use of "secondhand" anything is what works to dupe legislators into meddling in businesses (aka collateral damage) as a way to socially engineer the lives of private citizens -- a place I'd hope you'd normally think you don't belong but which you've been fooled into thinking you do.

And may I make clear that unlike the unreasonable anti-smokers, those of us defending smokers' rights do not insist that we be able to smoke anywhere we'd like.  We don't insist that bars or restaurants should let us smoke.  We insist that the choice should be left to the owner.  If an owner chooses to be non-smoking we support that choice.  Unlike the anti-smokers we also know what our feet are for and will simply go where we can find a preferred accomodation.

Sincerely,
Audrey Silk
Founder, NYC C.L.A.S.H. (Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment)


Now comes along... Secondhand Fat!

Obesity Is Contagious, Study Finds
 
Wondering why your waistline is expanding? Have a look at those of your friends. Your close friends can influence your weight even more than genes or your family members, according to new research appearing in the July 26 [2007] issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The study's authors suggest that obesity isn't just spreading; rather, it may be contagious between people, like a common cold.

Researchers from Harvard and the University of California, San Diego, reviewed a database of 12,067 densely interconnected people — that is, a group that included many families and friends

According to their analysis, when a study participant's friend became obese, that first participant had a 57% greater chance of becoming obese himself. In pairs of people in which each identified the other as a close friend, when one person became obese the other had a 171% greater chance of following suit. "You are what you eat isn't the end of the story," says study co-author James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego. "You are what you and your friends eat."

It's not just that people who share similar lifestyles become friends, Fowler says. He and co-author Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School considered the possibility — and were surprised. For one thing, geographic distance between friends in the study seemed to have no impact: friends who lived a 5-hour drive apart and saw each other infrequently were just as influenced by each other's weight gains as those who lived close enough to share weekly take-out meals or pick-up basketball games. The best proof that friendship caused the weight gain, says Fowler, is that people were much more likely to pattern their own behavior on the actions of people they considered friends — but the relationship didn't work in the other direction.

Fowler believes the effect has much more to do with social norms: whom we look to when considering appropriate social behavior. Having fat friends makes being fat seem more acceptable. "Your spouse may not be the person you look to when you're deciding what kind of body image is appropriate, how much to eat or how much to exercise," Fowler says. Nor do we necessarily compare ourselves to our siblings. "We get to choose our friends," says. "We don't get to choose our families."

For policy analysts, then, the lesson is that public-health interventions may well be far more cost-effective than previously acknowledged. Helping one person lose weight can have a snowball effect through an entire social network, affecting social norms among the target person's friends and acquaintances. "There's been a lot of talk about limiting portion size, getting rid of vending machines in schools," says Thomas Sander, a civic-engagement specialist at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, not involved in the research. Those interventions may be useful, he says. "This study suggests that if we're fighting obesity without taking into account the social aspect, we're going to be acting with our hands behind our backs." Most people recognize that smoking behavior and drinking behavior are influenced by group standards. But such thinking is relatively new for obesity, still so often thought of as an individual's moral failing or clinical condition.


Below, an opinion piece writer argues that one must support this ban on trans fat not just for the good of the person who eats it but because it has passive effects just like cigarette smoke.

She chastises those who, while condemning this ban, try to sound reasonable by saying it's not like the smoking ban everyone liked.  She calls them wrong!  Where there's one who thinks like this there are more.
 

Tougher tactics needed in obesity fight
Whittier Daily News - December 2006
By Eliza Walper

[Excerpt]

Those opposed to this change argue that the government seeks to interfere with one's personal dietary choices. They claim that, unlike the laws passed to ban smoking in restaurants, the risks of trans fats are not based upon passive consumption where the consumer has no choice in the matter. Medical statistics argue the contrary.

Yes, the public does have a constitutional right to eat as they please. However, people do not have the ability to make informed decisions about their health without the facts. With the public uneducated, the incidences of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity will continue to rise creating negative effects on both public health and the economy.

Obesity is on the rise at epidemic levels, and a comprehensive course of action is necessary if this sickness is to be remedied. It is time to regulate the food industry to match the modern lifestyle of Americans.

Full article at http://www.whittierdailynews.com/opinions/ci_4816332
 
 

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