"Los Angeles and L.A. County authorities are studying whether to bar hydrogenated vegetable oils as an ingredient in restaurant menu items," according to yesterday's LAT story by Tony Barboza.
I can sympathize with Tony's use of the word "bar" for "ban," as writers need a break every now and again from too-often-used terms and phrases. Certainly in our view, "ban" has got shopworn in several zip codes.
The story itself is not much different than ones we've read and groused about from New York and Chicago. But one passage caught my eye. Here, in a moment of brilliant honesty, is the subject laid bare:
"...The change in policy could take the form of a disclosure law or menu labeling,
but 'the best of all possible worlds would be a ban,' said county Supervisor
Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who recommended the study,"
The best of all possible worlds. Imagine! So many worlds, spinning in their slowly disintegrating orbits around so many stars in the sky. So many metaphysical possibilities--alternate universes, subatomic galaxies. And yet the VERY BEST of these will be one in which we've banned for all time the evil of hydrogenated oil.
I shot back to our little email list: "What the hell has happened to people?"
Steve replied, wearily, "...My constant question."
So hereby do we announce the launching of an exploratory committee to determine the efficacy of a nationwide "ban on banning things." We hope to discover if---in fact---a ban on anything has ever ushered in the best of all possible worlds. Is there an historical precedent? What can we learn from it?
Please submit your applications for committee membership in the comments section. Thank you.
1 comment:
Ever since California banned .50 BMG caliber rifles, new calibers that imitatr that cartridge's performance, without actually being 12.7x99mm (and thus being completely legal) have started popping up. There's one in nominally .510 caliber, and perhaps some day the Russian anti-materiel rifles in 12.7x108 will become availible.
If this little bit of brilliant piece of musing becomes law justified most ironically by flippant panglossian language, where's Voltaire when you need him?), then I suspect that some other source of saturated fat will be used in place of hydrogenated oils.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to identify the cheapest, most food safe and overall likely source of this substitute. If the poor elected fools in CA are actualy dumb enough to institute this ban, consider investing in the oil source you identified.
I'm pretty sure it's not immoral to be a ban profiteer.
-R. Arthur Wilderson
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