This science stuff cracks me up:

Production of hydrogenated fats increased steadily until the 1960s as artificially hardened liquid oils replaced naturally hard saturated animal fats in the US and other western countries. At first, the argument was a financial one due to lower costs; however, advocates also said that the unsaturated trans fats of margarine were healthier than the saturated fats of butter.[14] The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) campaigned against the use of saturated fats for fast food cooking starting in 1984. When fast food companies replaced the saturated fat with partially hydrogenated unsaturated fats, CSPI’s campaign against them ended. While CSPI defended trans fats in their 1987 Nutrition Action newsletter, by 1992 CSPI began to speak against trans fats and is currently strongly against their use.[15]

As we all know, Wikipedia is run by a bunch of hippies and who knows what’s right or not. But I can vouch for this part about the quacks at CSPI, because I worked at McDonalds in the late 70s for about five years and these nuts were running rampant then about our products. I’ve followed the food industry for years, coming from a family in the restaurant business, and of course, I am a Fat Guy. I’ve watched no end of quack do-gooders go through these kinds of gyrations for four decades. All they want is to tell you what to do, and as long as some idiot will pay attention to them, they’ll keep doing it. This time they happened to find an idiot mayor of the largest American city, so they get a nice score there. There was never anything wrong with saturated fats, and there’s nothing wrong with trans-fats, either. It’s just another peg to hang their bitchy manifestos on, and that’s it. The same principle applies to other industries I’ve been involved in, too, as well as most other pogroms run by the progs. Fact is, I can’t think of a single thing that all these various People’s Action Committees for the Well-Being of the People and Their Snot-Nosed Kids have been right about, anyway, outside of lead-based paint and asbestos. Boob jobs, anybody?

Me, I plan to fry my chicken in Crisco cut with lard just like my grandmother did, and I plan to butter my biscuits with butter, not fake-ass crappy margarine, just as the good Lord intended. And I’m going to cook my steaks rare and bloody in peppered olive oil, and I’ll like as not continue to forge right ahead with the chopping and cooking without washing my hands in scalding soapy water after I so much as look at poultry. Nobody’s died on my watch yet, nor gotten even a little bit sick, including the one who’s eaten the most of my cooking since I started cooking, and that’s me. If I ever do pass on as a result of what I made a decision to ingest, well, nobody gets out of here alive, and at least I’m not running around like some flaky Chicken Little, waiting for the vague, vaporous sky to fall.

I’m happy to note that Janis Gore, a TFG OG Blogroll member, now has an RSS feed. She’s filed in my next-gen blogroll under Texas, because she’s a Dallas lady (who remembers Titche’s*), married to a Louisiana gentleman lawyer, and residing in that fine state now. For those new to these parts, Janis’ recipes have been tried and tested in the TFG Kitchen Laboratories many times, and never found wanting by either the cook or the customers. But my backlog continues to grow, and my capabilities continue to shrink, so it could happen. But, here’s just a sample from her latest recommendation:

In a saucepan, melt 4 sticks butter

Gosh, I love those Cajuns…

* Titche’s (tie - chuz) is a long-gone department store that’s probably part of the May or Macy empire now, and it’s my verbal shorthand for anything to do with fancy-pants cloths (“Guess I best go to Titche’s and get a new pair of pants before I go to stupid New York.”). The only thing more retro-TFG-Dallas might be EM Kahn’s, but I’ve never asked her about that.

Let the record show that the march to totalitarianism continues apace, with the latest goose-step forward coming not here in Jesusland, but in dear old New York City, where the formerly rough-n-tumble Yankee stands happily in his shackles:

“I don’t care about what might be politically correct and what’s not,” said Murray Bader, nursing a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts on Tuesday morning. “I want to live longer!”

“This is New York,” she said. “People eat out a lot. We don’t have a choice. We need someone to make it a healthier proposition.”

“It’s basically a slow form of poison,” says David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center. “I applaud New York City and frankly, I think there should be a nationwide ban.”

It’s also what worries Kathy Ramirez, a 26-year-old New York mother who takes her toddler to McDonalds every week. [...] “It’s hurting us, all this fat, but the kids really like it,” said Ramirez, pointing to 3-year-old Amber, who’d just finished her dinner. “It would be better to know what we’re getting.”

“In this country there are so many obese people _ it really is a disgrace,” Briguet says. “It’s important for the health of the population to ban these artificial fats. When I was growing up in France, my mother never even gave me a French fry. We don’t have a fryer here. We just sautee our potatoes in some good butter.” The mayor, Briguet added, “is just as responsible for the health of someone eating the wrong food as for someone who kills himself smoking.” Bloomberg banned smoking in New York’s bars and restaurants during his first term.

“You can’t put lead in your food, right? With trans fats, you’re not going to die as fast, but they are clearly bad for you and people don’t even know when they’re eating them,” Zagat says.

I reckon two things:
a) Booze is probably next in NYC…why not? It’s clearly bad for you.
b) Dallas mayor Laura Miller will rush legislation onto the City Council agenda in order to keep the Dallas title of “Where the East petered out…”

If I owned a restaurant, I’d pull out of NooYawk and leave the feeding of the Eloi to someone else…but then, why not stay and profit from this if you can find a way to do it? I’m sure the next ban won’t hurt very much, either, and it almost certainly will be The Right Thing To Do.