Richard Posner on the trans fat ban

December 20th, 2006
Uncategorized

Poser (on the Becker-Posner blog) does an excellent, studied, academic and typically pragmatic analysis of the NYC trans fat ban.  And, not withstanding a purely libertarian point of view, I might be inclined to accept his conclusion that the ban is “reasonable”. It certainly is an entertaining exercise to follow his arguments and arrive at your own conclusions in any event.

There are a few issues however that are missing and were missed by the numerous comments to the topic.

In Posner’s pragmatic approach to the consideration, he raises evaluating “information” costs – that is the cost of the consumer being informed as to the health effects of trans fat, and suggested that certainly they are more than trivial if in having to avoid them, they are required to study a menu deriding the negative health effects, etc (would detract from the “value” of dining out no doubt! - “no one wants his restaurant experience poisoned by having to read a menu that lists besides each item the number of grams of trans fat it contains and indicates (perhaps by skull and cross bones the danger created by consuming the item.”)  But then, curiously he points out “Actually the danger would be impossible to explain to diners, because it would depend on the diner’s average daily consumption of trans fats, which neither the diner nor the restaurant knows.”

Nice. So if it would be impossible to explain to diners – who exactly is it that really understands?  There are a couple of ways to take this statement, the most obvious being one of arrogant elitism.  But moving on, -then the danger of  restaurant trans fat is not solely due to restaurant trans fat but to other sources of trans fat. This is obvious of course but only hints at a deeper understanding that may be impossible to explain even to Posner!  For example, is the effect of trans fat on heart disease a single factor? In other words, is it simply related to trans fat and  not on other individual health factors (or synergistic combinations thereof…), such as age, sex, cardiovascular activity, stress, smoking, genetics variations, diabetes, over all nutritional status ( maybe high or low niacin intake, or other drugs such as aspirin usage, NSAID usage.)  How were the studies actually conducted that lead to the “substantial medical evidence that they are significant contributors to heart disease (perhaps increasing the incidence of heart disease by as much as 6 percent) because they both raise the cholesterol that is bad for you (LDL) and lower the cholesterol that helps to protect your arteries against the effects of the bad cholesterol (HDL)”? There is some suggestion that while the medical community has been informed, the underlying information may be suspect.

But to be fair, if there is any negative correlation, why risk it - particularly if the cost of avoiding trans fats is low?   Posner’s cost-benefit analysis arrives at a cost – to the NYC restaurants – of $60 million annually to move away from trans fats.  Accepting his underlying assumptions (based on the change over adding 1% to the food costs) and saving $3.5 billion in health benefits, this should be a no brainer! Just do it! But…

What is the cost – to the tax payer – of enforcing the change over – and what would be the real efficacy?  And why shouldn’t the restaurants willingly comply?

And, in all the focus, do we miss the forest for this particularly tree? For example, do we know, can we compare, have we or can we conduct the study that rules out synthetic hormones and other synthetic chemicals that are in our food supply from being equally or more insidious than trans fat to our overall health?

Our food supply is at greater risk than that from trans fat.  Recent occurrences of E. coli suggest that this alone may be a greater health risk nation wide than trans fat.  If more “government” directed oversight/regulation is needed, recognizing the gaps in the safety of our food supply makes a better investment overall.  It would be a simple matter to corrupt the food supply and inflict substantial real – immediate- and catastrophic costs on all of us. How do we protect against that?

Go ahead and ban trans fat.  But please convince me we have a handle on the safety of our food supply while you’re at it!

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