Tuesday, December 05, 2006

New York finds a way to raise cost of living even higher.

So New York banned trans fats in all restaurants, in a bold move to make one of Americas most expensive cities even more expensive and less fun. Trans fats are lovely things to cheap restaurants: they make cookies soft, french fries crisp, and pizza greazy. Now that trans fats are banned, every food seller will have to switch from cheap, stable hydrogenated vegetable oils to more expensive products.

Please, Boston- you decided to follow New York's lead on banning smoking, getting rid of convenient, reasonably priced tokens in favor of overpriced easily lost plastic cards- we forgive you. Just don't follow New York's lead on this.

Most people who are for banning trans fats don't even know what trans fats are. I'll explain them, so you all (you all being the four people who read this blog) feel cool. "Fats" are long strings of fatty acids, which are connected to each other with two bondy guys, or with one bondy guy. If all the bonds on the long string of fatty acids are made with two bondy guys, it's a saturated fat. If some of the bonds on the long string of fatty acids have only one bondy guy, its a poly-unsaturated fat. If only one of the bonds on the long string of fatty acids have one bondy guy, it's a mono-unsaturated fat. If the first single bondy guy is on the third link in the chain, it's Omega 3. If the first single bondy guy is on the sixth link in the chain, it's Omega 6.

Either kind of unsaturated fat makes health nuts orgasm uncontrollably all over themselves, currently.

A trans fat starts out as an unsaturated fat, but then some sciency guy or process makes one single bondy guy into a double bondy guy. This turns a fat which was "cis", or all straight looking, into one that's "trans", or all bendy looking.

It doesn't take vegetable oil and turn it into pure evil that waits in your cells to kill you later. It takes a cheap, liquid fat and makes it behave like an expensive, solid fat. Also, it may raise your bad cholesterol. But you could always eat less damned fat anyway.

It used to be that New Yorkers had a reputation for being thick skinned, jaded, cynical people who ate pizza and hot dogs and pretzels while chain-smoking and watching people get mugged. And now New Yorkers are worse than Californians. A city that once did nothing while Kitty Genovese was stabbed thirty times is now paralysed with fright over of one single extra hydrogen in the oil that fried their authentic Belgian-Style Frites served with an insoucient roasted red pepper aoli.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Little-known facts:

--New Yorkers have been health nuts since the Sixties.

--Kitty Genovese was made of trans fats.

So her repeated stabbing was heralded by New Yorkers.

I'm going to hell.

The Dissassociate said...

hmmm...so you're telling me that my broad-ranging stereotypes gleaned from years of pop cultural consumption of media that often includes monkey sidekicks and unrealistic rental real estate might be wrong?

I'll take that under advisement.

The Dissassociate said...

Also, you won't go to hell.

Because it made me laugh.

Actually, considering other things I've laughed at, and said...yeah, you're going to hell. Almost certainly. But, hey- heat and hot water included.

Anonymous said...

I think people should be given a choice as oppossed to an all out ban. Hmmm...do I want to be naughty and eat fried chicken made with transfat or fried chicken made with unsaturated fat? Being a good Southern girk I'll take the one made with transfat anyday. Not every day though. That being said there's a reason why people from my state are the fattest in the nation.

Anonymous said...

I'm a girk? Oh dear. Too bad I had to find out here.

Roger Williams said...

Entertainingly, this is a move that fucks the poor the hardest, since haute cuisine doesn't use trans-fat: soul food and Chinese take out places do. Way to strike a blow for the common man, New York.