A January 10, 2007 column by George Mason University economics professor Walter Williams, appearing in Human Events, in Deseret News, and on PittsburghLive.com, mentions the reaction of ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan to the trans fat hysteria:
In the wake of New York City's ban on restaurant use of trans fat, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the ban is "not going to take away anybody's ability to go out and have the kind of food they want, in the quantities they want...We are just trying to make food safer."
That, my friends, is tyrannical double talk. Let's look at it. Trans fats are derived from partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. They can raise blood levels of LDL, the "bad cholesterol." According to Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of American Council on Science and Health, trans fats are about 2 percent of our daily caloric intake, while saturated fats, which also raise LDL blood levels, make up 10 percent to 15 percent.
