Our View: Government by 'ifs,' 'maybes'

In one small step for health, but a giant leap for those who would control your life, it will be illegal for restaurants to serve food containing trans unsaturated fatty acids after July 1, 2010. Trans fats are the stuff created by pumping hydrogen into liquid oils. It keeps food edible longer, nicer to look at and crisp and flavorful. It also probably isn't good for you, but you didn't need a scientist to explain that donuts and French fries aren't health food.

Californians can thank their Legislature, which can't even pay its own bills, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, self-styled health crusader, for forcing compliance (or up to $1,000 fines) on 88,000-plus restaurants, bakeries and other food dispensaries.

Set aside the "iffy" nature of the diktat's claims that trans fats "could" result "over time" in a "25 percent likelihood" of "increased" heart disease, a string of "ifs" and "maybes."

Let's not even dispute this revealing comment on the state of trans fat science by the American Heart Association's incoming president: "These are data we are just now beginning to understand." Though, one wonders how complete an understanding can be if it's "just now beginning."

We're not scientists. We'll let experts fuss over how much a threat trans fats may pose. It's a wonder anyone wakes up these days, vulnerable as we are to all the things that "could" result "over time" in some chance of killing us.

The larger issue is the absolute nature of this mandate. When New York City adopted a similar ban last year, it was touted as a "model" for other jurisdictions.

"A model of what? Petty tyranny?" George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux told ABC's John Stossel. "Or perhaps for similarly inspired bans on other voluntary activities with health risks?"

Many restaurants voluntarily have eliminated trans fats, responding as businesses do to consumers' preferences. It's consumers, after all, whose health is or isn't at risk. And it's consumers whose choice it should be to gobble up healthy food or not-so-healthy food.

Why the need for government intervention? Economist Walter Williams pulled back the curtain, writing on the New York City ban.

"The nation's food zealots have taken a page from their anti-smoking counterparts," wrote Williams, noting that smoking first was banned in closed quarters but has expanded even to beaches. "They've started out with a small target -- a ban on restaurant use of trans fats. . . If banning a fat that's only two percent of our daily caloric intake is wonderful, why not ban saturated fats, the intake of which is much higher? Then there's the size of restaurant servings. Instead of a law simply requiring restaurants to label the calories in a meal, there will be laws setting a legal limit on portions."

Williams was prescient. "Perhaps the biggest issue is how much of the foods do we even need to be eating?" Keith-Thomas Ayoob, associate professor in the Pediatrics Department at Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told ABC News. Here's the really scary part: ABC reports that, "Ayoob described the ban as a positive, albeit small, step."

Get a grip on your cheeseburgers and fries folks. At this rate of government "assistance" they may soon be available only on the black market.