Transfats banned in California but smoking still OK

Me personally, I'd rather not eat plastic food. Call me crazy.

 

Actually smoking is banned in restaurants in CA, too, much to the chagrin of restaurant owners in Los Gatos.

Explanation of that statement: Los Gatos was the first city in the Bay Area to ban smoking in restaurants. Of course the restaurant owners whined that they'd lose all their business, but the Los Gatos government held its ground.

As soon as the ban went into effect, the restaurant owners were STILL whining - only this time they were whining they couldn't handle all the new business they were getting as people from all over the Bay Area were descending on Los Gatos to eat in unpolluted air.

 

I'm sure this has far more to do with tobacco lobbyists than anything resembling logic.

 

Simple explanation.... Trans Fat isn't taxed.

 

and trans fat doesn't have lobbyists... oops, hyo beat me to that one

at any rate, you gotta eat. say i go on vacation to california. (i actually have plans to go someday, but not anytime soon.) i'm probably going to be eating at restaurants quite a bit unless i rent a hotel room with a mini kitchen or something. it's kinda nice knowing that i wouldn't be consuming trans fat during my stay in california.

i can't say that i gotta smoke. though yes, i do get some secondhand exposure every now and then.

just a thought.

 

Smoking is not only banned in Restaurants and bars, but also all public buildings and even some public spaces.

Schwarzenegger has his little "smoking tent" set up for a fix. Even he can't smoke in the Capitol building.

Contrary to being a drag on the economy, non-smoking regs have actually been shown to be "profitable".

 

Yes, but not necessarily for the tobacco companies, hence the lobbyists and 'smoker's rights.' Which brought up a very good point, that non-smokers have rights, too, and the bans have grown from there. So far, it seems like a victory for the little guy, but there's still something wrong in a society that allows people to "profit" from selling a lethally addictive product.

 

Sounds good to me.

I'd rather not have to read the fine print to see if what I am eating really is FOOD.

 

Smoking stinks and along with that is harmful to all of us, especially those with respiratory problems. I will vote for eliminating both trans fat and smoking.

 

What California should do is ban nicotine in cigarettes. Why not?

 

This could mean no more muffins in California. Can you smoke transfat? I have heard that second hand muffins can be dangerous.

 

We need to start a Trans-Fat Lobby. How much the trans-fat industry might suffer could be mind boggling. We can't sit back and allow these potential loses in a time when the average worker needs all the help they can get.

 

In Maine, a 16 year old person is required by law to wear a helmet when on a bicycle, however it is legal for them to ride a motorcycle without one.

If anyone actually examined the close relationship between alcohol abuse and domestic violence, booze would be banned.

Cigarettes are bad but what will happen to our population of overweight children as they age will make lung cancer look like a case of the flu.

In Portland Maine the traffic lights were designed to improve the flow of pedestrians so now we have cars polluting more and burning more gas than they used to.

Perhaps if we spent more time educating people to read the labels of the food they purchase and educate them on the positives and negatives of what we put into our bodies, we wouldn't need to legislate a ban on transfats? Think of it as a modern day version of natural selection or Darwinism...

 

Trans fat and smoking are both detracters. There's an old middleeast expression, "...they strain out the gnats while they swallow the camels". That's all that's going on w/ these issues.

Legislators won't get their $hit together to stop fossel fuels from going out of existence, nor to prevent child abuse, or prevent drugs like crystal meth, or improve social programs .... need I go on?

No, they want to piddle with the easy stuff, simply to make it look like they're doing something for their obscene paycheck, medical bennies, giant retirement programs, etc. Funny, isn't it? ... how they all manage to take care of their OWN needs legislatively.

 

You know, I that lesson one for anyone who has ever been in government, at any level, is that you can't legislate good behavior. The more complete you think that you've made your legislation, the easier it is to find exceptions.

<sarcasm>What's next, a ban on cooking with unsaturated fat? I'm mean after all, if you take a natural cis unsaturated fat and heat it you might flip some of the double-bonds to the trans configuration, and who's going to sit there with molecular tweezers and pick out all the illegal molecules.</sarcasm>

Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily disagree with the spirit of this, but I'd have thought that there were better, and potentially more cost effective ways of doing this.

So what's the natural selection pressure here, the lack of education or the fact that we seem intent on solving our problems with legislation?

 

It's good that trans fats are going away. But I worry that the replacements will be equally never-before-seen-in-nature products from the chemistry lab. It will be another 20 years before we know if the replacements are any healthier than the current trans fats.

 

Yeah, those food 'substitutes' are an issue. I've yet to give up butter and sugar, because I think they're more healthful than their 'better living through chemistry' counterparts. Margarine? Aspartame? Ick.