What About Logic? - One Stop Shopping For Bad Arguments Against Banning Trans-Fats

I've already talked about the trans-fat ban over on the e-group but today's column (subscription required) by Lysiane Gagnon was so irritating that I had to devote an entire post to it.

She starts with a multi-paragraph ode to Tenderflake, and then says:

Practically all parliamentarians blindly followed the NDP into this new crusade, as if the house was on fire and we were all about to die from an overdose of trans fats.

1) Did the people who voted against the ban 'blindly oppose it' - or does the word 'blindly' only apply to people with the wrong opinion?

2) Crusade? - hyperbole anyone? Actually, crusade is one of those shorthand words columnists seem to use when they want to convey an impression without backing it up with an argument. I'll be sure to include an entry for it when I compile my Canadian columnist dictionary (someday, someday).

3) Presumably, if they thought the house was on fire, they wouldn't have voted to set up a committee to study the issue for a year to come up with a sensible way to implement a ban (OK, they're politicians, they might indeed do that if the house was on fire, but I still think it's a misleading impression of the action they took here).

Next up:

But, hey, let's calm down. A pie for eight persons requires two tablespoons of shortening. This makes a quarter of a tablespoon a person — not enough, certainly, to end up in a cardiac ward!

And I suppose if a typical Canadian's average lifetime exposure to trans-fat was to eat an eighth of a pie, this might possibly be relevant. Joking aside, the reason for the ban is that scientists figure thousands of Canadians have ended up in the cardiac ward due to trans-fat consumption.

On a roll, she continues with my favourite bit:

The same, actually, could be said of any food, even of supposedly healthy food. Taken in excess, anything can be bad for your health, even milk, yogurt, lentils, fibre, tomatoes and olive oil. On Friday, this newspaper's health page even warned us that drinking too much water could be terrible for our kidneys. A healthy diet is made up of a little bit of everything — including, yes, an occasional bowl of oily chips or a handful of fat-laden cookies. The only rule lies in a single word: moderation.

I'm no health expert, but presumably Dr. Walter Willett (from the Harvard School of Public Health) is. He's quoted in an article on the CTV website as saying: ""trans fats have no place in a healthy diet."

Look, it's simple, if something is good for you, it still needs to be taken in moderation. This DOES NOT apply if something is just plain bad for you.

She goes on:

Why was Parliament in such a hurry to pass a motion calling for a full ban of processed trans fats from food sold in Canada within a year? Even though the food industry has started to move in this direction, it hasn't yet developed acceptable substitutes to ensure texture and shelf life of pre-packaged food (only people who don't cook and don't shop think these are unimportant considerations).

Is it maybe just possible that food isn't meant to last for a year?

What is certain is that consumers will absorb the cost of the research. This may be why no other country except Denmark resorted to such a radical solution — not even France, which is at the forefront of the battle against genetically modified organisms and where people are highly sensitive about the quality of their food.

Or maybe it's because we are only starting to realize the true impact of trans-fat and Canada is ahead of the curve for once. Or maybe it's because the food lobby is stronger in other countries. And to be honest, if my government decided to leave something harmful in my food supply because otherwise I'd have to absorb the increased cost of accelerating research which was being done anyway, I wouldn't be all that impressed. Bring on the research costs - if a Mars bar is still worth it to me, I'll buy it, if not, I'll buy something else.

The French have adopted the sensible solution of requiring clear labelling, so consumers know what they are buying. Are Canadians so dumb they couldn't learn to decipher labels and make an informed choice?

This is a straw man, the problem is not being informed (it's easy to pick out trans-fat in an ingredient list already), the problem is having a choice. A label won't help if all your choices contain the same ingredient in the same quantity (as they do now). And it won't help at restaurants, when visiting friends or pretty much any time you eat something you didn't shop for yourself.

After a bit of rambling we get to the big finale:

"And what about logic? In Canada, tobacco products are freely sold, even though they are noxious and a major cause of cancers. Alcohol is also freely sold, even though it can lead to countless diseases. And now Parliament intends to decriminalize the use of pot, which can be harmful to teenagers. The country's leaders, meanwhile, are all worked up about Oreo cookies. This is more than illogical — it's ridiculous!!"

OK, it's a bit late now, but what about logic? Is there a logical distinction to be made between tobacco/alcohol/pot and trans-fat?

The short answer is yes. Tobacco/alcohol/pot are all stand-alone products which people consume knowing the risks involved because the benefits of the harmful substance outweigh the risk (in their opinion). Everybody can make their own choice to consume or not consume these products without it affecting anything other than their consumption of that specific product. And because people want these benefits, banning these items will lead to a black market.

Now consider lead. Nobody ever went out to consume lead saying, I know this lead is going to kill me but I just like it too much so it's worth it to me. People wanted to paint a wall so they went out and bought paint, or they wanted to drive a car so they went and bought gas.

Lead is now banned (in most cases) but tobacco/alcohol/pot are not.

Which one is trans-fat more like. A stand-alone product you consume because it offers benefits to you which outweigh the risks? Or an ingredient in another product which you use for a purpose unrelated to the effect of the harmful substance.

More to the point, will banning trans-fat lead to the development of a black market because people are willing to pay so much extra for products with a longer shelf life?

Banning trans-fat isn't a crusade, it hasn't been rushed into, it's not illogical and it's definitely not ridiculous with two exclamation points - it's just a sensible idea that will make life a little better and a little healthier for the people of Canada.

Good news day

Some good news for a change in Canada today:

First off, as someone who consumes more than his share of pre-packaged, high-fat food, it's good to see the Canadian government moving to follow the lead of Denmark (and New York fries) and ban trans-fats (for the most part anyway).

There's a great, (albeit somewhat smug) quote from Dr. Steed Stender, the head of the Danish Nutrition Council on the CTV's website on the topic (note: this quote is from before today's decision, back when Canada was still planning mandatory labelling for trans-fats, but no other regulation).

As for the Canadian and U.S. governments' approach, Stender has strong words.

"As they say in North America: 'You can put poison in food, if you label it properly.' Here in Denmark, we remove the poison and people don't have to know anything about trans fatty acids," he says."

Let's just hope they follow through on this and it doesn't die in a cut-off minority session or get watered down by industry lobby groups in the Senate like the bill on animal cruelty.


Second on the good news front, the Ontario government seems to be following B.C.'s lead in appointing a 'citizen's assembly' to study electoral reform.

Let it be known I hereby predict that the assembly will propose a Mixed-Member Proportional system (in contrast to the one in B.C. which recommended STV (Single transferrable vote). Let it also be known that either STV or MMP would be a vast improvement over the current First-Past-the-Post system which was never designed to accommodate anything other than a 2 party system.


Finally, the last piece of good news "Canada will be champion of Kyoto, Dion vows":

Just words so far, but better words than we've heard on the topic in a long time from the Liberals. And coming from someone who just may have the smarts and guts to make it happen. I wish him all the luck in the world.


So that wraps up today's good news. OK, it's true, our civilization is still unlikely to make it to the end of the current century intact but that doesn't mean we shouldn't avoid unnecessary heart attacks, try to prevent the destabilization of the global environment and replace outdated electoral systems in the meantime.

Update (July 17, 2009): So the Federal government still has taken no action on trans-fat, but the B.C. government will limit them starting in September, 2009.

The Ontario citizen's assembly did recommend MMP as I predicted but it was defeated in the referendum. Stéphane Dion wasn't just all talk with his environmental rhetoric, but sadly was unable to form a government as Liberal leader to implement any of it - since 2004 Canada's record on the Kyoto/Climate Change file has been one of, if not the worst in the world.

So much for good news.