Underground Cheeseburger
Big states controlling our diets

As goes California, so goes the country. Or at least, so goes the old adage that many Americans hope isn't true.

If it is true, expect state governments everywhere to begin forcing healthy diets on citizens. California's government has begun this by protecting the public from trans fats. 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, 2009. 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 doughnuts 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 quipped to 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 and columnist 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 2 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 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.

Obama remains mysterious

Presumptive Democratic candidate Barack Obama's world tour can be viewed as a triumph on several levels, especially considering the pitfalls that lay in wait and the gaffes he could have made. While the trip demonstrated that this candidate has crowd appeal and novelty appeal in much of the rest of the world, and is treated with respect by officials in other countries, it is still an open question whether it will convince American voters that he has the stuff to cope in a potentially dangerous world.

Obama's major concern is that in a year when Democrats outstrip Republicans in generic polls, and the Democrats are expected to handily increase their majorities in Congress, he has yet to outpoll presumptive Republican nominee John McCain by more than a few percentage points - though one post-Grand Tour poll showed him pulling to an eight-point advantage. The conventional wisdom is that this is because of his youth and inexperience, especially in foreign affairs and national security, the only issue area where voters show a preference for McCain.

Taunted by McCain for not having been to Iraq recently and for lacking foreign experience, Obama arranged his weeklong, eightnation tour.

For the most part he did well, listening respectfully, balancing his words and actions so as not to upset potentially fragile balances (see Israel-Palestine) and benefiting from unexpected convergence on Iraq policy. He pulled an enthusiastic crowd of 200,000 to listen to him speak at his only truly public event in Berlin.

The closest thing to a gaffe was the decision not to make a previously scheduled visit to wounded U.S. service people at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Facility in Germany - and even though the McCain campaign jumped on that with an instant negative ad, one can see a case either way.

Perhaps this should not be surprising, given that Obama is an eminently disciplined individual who has run a remarkably disciplined campaign that made few mistakes and ran rings around the supposedly formidable Hillary Clinton campaign juggernaut. There is little doubt that he is an intelligent, thoughtful person who gives a terrific speech, though he is less at ease in less-formal situations like news conferences, and has a tendency to become touchy when challenged.

That speech in Berlin illustrates a problem, however. Like most of Obama's speeches, it played well to the crowd and sounded impressive at first listen. When you read it later, however, the preponderance of style over substance became clear.

It was derivative of then-President Ronald Reagan's famous "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" Brandenburg Gate speech in 1987, and in a lame attempt to further the metaphor, it talked about tearing down "walls" between countries, races, tribes and religions - a vaguely utopian aspiration no politician can claim to be able to accomplish.

One shouldn't discount the importance of hope, but Obama has yet to offer anything much more concrete. He has made it clear that he isn't about to challenge the broad outlines of the American impulse to manage the rest of the world, just that his priorities would be different than President Bush's.

Policies different from the Bush administration's (big government, unbridled spending, war, war, war) would be good. But most Americans would like to know what those new policies might be. So far, they're left to wonder whether an attractive candidate with such a thin resume of actual experience in the world, beyond local Chicago politics, is suited to lead the country in a time of widespread global unrest.