The BOH is also voting to require menu labeling in chain restaurants. Essentially it would require any restaurants with 10 or more location to put nutritional information on the menu next to the relevant item. So when you order a Big Mac at McDonalds, the number of calories, amount of fat, etc, would be right up on the reader board.
http://www.metrokc.gov/health/boh/regulations.htm

The legislation would require all food establishments with operating permits from Public Health – Seattle & King County to discontinue using products that contain 0.5 grams or more of artificial trans fat per serving, excluding pre-packaged foods with nutritional labels.

This regulation and the menu labeling regulation (chain restaurants with 10+ locations) are GREAT!! Please keep us up to date!

You mean that 12 piece bucket of KFC that I just dominated is potentially unhealthy? I never would have known had King Ron not told me.

As for monitoring, Public Health already inspects restaraunts. this is just one more thing for them to look for.

If you think thats costly, look at the health costs associated with obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Treating one person with heart disease could hire 3 or 4 health inspectors.

As for cluttering up the menu, reader boards would only need to have calories, if I am reading the proposal right. Print menus would have more.

You can read it here http://www.metrokc.gov/health/boh/proposed-regulation-0701.pdf

Worst argument against regulation ever. Food manufacturers were saying the same thing before the Pure Food and Drug Act, in an effort to ensure they would continue selling products cut with genuinely poisonous chemicals to an unsuspecting public. If you think that you're capable of evaluating the safety of every product that you use - or, for that matter, that you're the only one who carries the consequences when you make a wrong decision - you're deluded.

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an author-ity which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a many who had folly and presump-tion enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Of course, they (the populace) are not (intelligent enough to make their own decisions).

Not that I really give a shit if ignorant people gorge themselves on trans fats. That said, there are plenty of alternatives and I don't see a ban as being particularly onerous.

It doesn't matter what happens to Dick's food. Everybody will still love it, defend it, and claim that it tastes remarkable and that nothing short of an orgasm can compete.

Speaking of Dick's, whatever happened to Mr. Zwickel's follow up?

Here's some more quotes that would seem to advocate government action against price fixing, cartels, and monopolies:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

Here he is advocating a progressive taxation system:

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. The expense of government to the individuals of a great nation is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate. In the observation or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the equality or inequality of taxation.

For a full explanation, I recommend you pick up a copy of Rob Walton's Adam Smith against Capitalism.

I suspect some people confuse this with actual saturated fat.

and, as for the small amounts of trans fat found naturally in *some* dairy and *some* beef. these are infinitesimally small amounts. keep in mind that 65% of all trans fats consumed in US diets comes from just three sources: commercially produced bakery goods (donuts, cakes, cookies, pies, crackers, bread, etc.), margarine, and fried potatoes (ie: french fries, tots, etc).

"During its first 15 years of operation, ACSH published the names of its institutional funders, but it has stopped doing this in recent years, making it harder to identify where all of its money comes from. In the latest years for which information is available, some 40 percent of ACSH's budget was supplied directly by industry, including a long list of food, drug and chemical companies that have a vested interest in supporting Whelan's message." ---sourcewatch.org

And from wikipedia:

"According to the Congressional Quarterly's Public Interest Profiles, Whelan's organization received more than 75 percent of their funding from the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. As a result, the ACSH has been accused of being more of a public relations firm, and less of a neutral council on Science. Jeff Stier, Associate Director of ACSH, has claimed that this information is outdated and inaccurate, with ACSH receiving less than 50 percent of their funding from industry. Despite Dr. Whelan's oft-repeated denial that ACSH is influenced by its funders, there are instances in which funders are known to have participated directly in the production of council publications. According to the council's former administrative director, The Hershey Company did the in-house printing of an ACSH booklet on the health effects of sugar consumption, and the Stroh Brewery Company participated in the editing of a booklet about the health effects of alcohol. The participation of those companies was not acknowledged by ACSH."

just saying