Pernicious Deliciousness

by Kristina Rasmussen Not content with reaching into your wallets for more tax dollars, state legislators now want to reach into your lunch box to ban a common food ingredient. Last week the Illinois House passed a bill to ban restaurants and other retail venues from selling food containing trans fats starting in 2013. The prohibition would also...

by Kristina Rasmussen

Not content with reaching into your wallets for more tax dollars, state legislators now want to reach into your lunch box to ban a common food ingredient.

Last week the Illinois House passed a bill to ban restaurants and other retail venues from selling food containing trans fats starting in 2013. The prohibition would also extend to snacks sold in schools via vending machine.

However, government-run entities (like prisons) would be exempt from the ban, as would over-the-counter food served by school cafeterias. The bill indicates that it is a “goal” for these institutions to stop offering trans fats by 2016, but it isn’t a hard ban like the one forced on private businesses.

If trans fat is truly the horror that opponents make it out to be, why exempt our schools from the ban? Surely, kids would be among the first we’d want to “protect” from the dangers of pernicious deliciousness. The answer: $$$. School cafeterias are exempt “because of concerns that cash-strapped school districts wouldn’t be able to quickly make the switch.”

I understand that replacements for trans fat can cost more, and I appreciate the tight budgets many schools are facing. But can’t the same be said for the many private restaurants that operate on small profit margins? Many restaurants are still reeling from lower levels of disposable consumer spending. How can it be fair to force private businesses to swallow a costly new government mandate, but exempt public institutions?

This reminds me of a committee hearing I sat through in Springfield last year. Up for consideration was a bill to mandate that Illinois employers offer smoking cessation treatment as part of health insurance packages. Even though it would have raised insurance prices in Illinois (inevitably leading some to lose their coverage as employers dropped pricier plans), the bill seem poised to pass. It was only when someone pointed out that the mandate would also increase the state’s cost for public employee health care insurance that the bill was shelved.

Pushing a “pain for thee, but not for me” line of legislating doesn’t sit well with folks who are tired of special deals for the politically connected. If banning trans fats is the way to go (and I’m not arguing it is; check out this great commentary from Reason‘s Nick Gillespie), let’s at least stop picking winners and losers.