Angry Callers Prompt (NJ State) Senator to Close Office

[struggle4progress]

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 8, 2006

TRENTON, N.J., Oct. 6 (AP) — Angry telephone calls over her proposal to ban restaurants from using a type of cooking oil blamed for increasing people’s cholesterol levels prompted a New Jersey state senator to close her office early on Friday.

State Senator Ellen Karcher said her Freehold Township office answered about 60 calls from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Friday protesting her plan to introduce a bill that would forbid New Jersey restaurants to serve food made with trans fats. She said she closed her office at 12:30 p.m.

The ban would prohibit the use of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, which has been in shortening and frying oil for decades. Doctors don’t like trans fat because of its effect on cholesterol levels, and some studies have blamed it for an epidemic of heart disease deaths ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/nyregion/08trans.html

[bluestateguy]

1. This lady sounds like a drama queen

Being a politician means you are going to make some decisions that make some people angry. Deal with it.

Banning trans fat? Sounds a little Nanny Statish to me.

[Warpy]

5. It would be if trans fats weren't an adulterant,

something to allow high fat foods to sit on the shelf for months instead of going rancid within a few weeks.

For a full discussion of what they are and what they do, go to http://www.webmd.com/content/article/71/81217.htm?ecd=ppc_google_transfats_news_transfats&gclid=CP_9oZm76IcCFSNoUAodCTnBkw

Personlly, I like my food without them, so I learned how to cook.

[Trillo]

8. Why not education instead of force by choice removal?

I'm certain I don't like being 'forced' to do anything. Whatever happened to the idea of 'education'? Has education now been proven faulty to leaders who discount its power and who now default to removing little-people's choices?

While it may not be as effective in the short term, it likely would be as effective in the longer term to simply require restaurants who use transfats to post a prominent notice. This way, the restaurant customer is advised of the facts, and can make their own 'choices' for what they choose to eat.

Something like:

Transfats are used in this restaurant. They have been implicated in cancer, so eat here at your own health risk.

Eating transfats doesn't appear, like with smoking, to be a danger to the other people who choose not to eat transfats but who sit in the same room with those who do, if one person decides to eat them.

[Thickasabrick]

2. I understand why people are angry - next they will be legislating

what parents can pack in their kid's school lunches....oh wait, I think some places may already do that.

I think it would be ok if they made the restaurants disclose what foods were cooked in the transfats - then people could make a choice.

[Trillo]

9. Whoops, you already made that point.

I agree. We definitely do not live in a 'free world' of 'free markets' and 'free choices'. Maybe if you're rich you do, but for the rest of us, well all decisions are made for us by others.

Obviously, if we're not rich, we don't deserve the right to make 'choices,' because clearly we haven't made all the best choices, because if we had, we'd be rich, too. (yes, it's sarcastic)

[TomInTib]

3. Our town has a ban on trans-fats.

Those people in Jersey are just pissed off because the price of fries and scrapple will go up without trans-fats.

I am not poking fun at scrapple, either. It is one of my favorite guilty pleasures.

[orwell]

4. They will be "banned" eventually anyway...

...many of the food companies are using "No trans fat" as a selling point.

Trans fats are pretty really nasty stuff...

[no_hypocrisy]

6. Is Ellen Karcher related to Alan Karcher who helped Marybeth Whitehead

with Baby M in the 80s?

[struggle4progress]

7. Senator Karcher brings her daughters to work (April 22, 2004)

... "This is an excellent opportunity for me to show my daughters what I do as a Senator, as well as to impress on them the importance of protecting the environment. I want them to have the same experience I had as a little girl when my father (former Speaker of the Assembly Alan Karcher) took me to Trenton, long before there was an organized day to bring kids to work. I got to meet then-Governor Richard Hughes and watch my Dad while he was meeting with constituents." ...
http://www.njsendems.com/Releases/04/April/Senator%20Karcher%20Brings%20her%20Daughters%20to%20Work,%204-22-04.htm

[NotGivingUp]

10. where's the choice for the people who do NOT want to eat

trans fats??? i sincerely cannot believe the reaction of many people in this forum. it's like don't you dare tell them to stop poisoning us. foods can be made to taste exactly the same if not better and healthier. i for one do not have a death wish. it's pitiful. the only way you can eat healthy in this country is to do all your own cooking from scratch. any fast food, restaurants, processed foods in the food store are all freaking loaded with crap and they've been loading more and more crap into these products every year. you can't buy any processed food that isn't absolutely loaded with TONS of MSG going under the disguise of various names. wake up people. look around. i can't believe how many FAT people there are. you can thank msg, high fructose corn syrup. these same ingredients are causing diabetes 2 to run rampant by affecting insulin resistance. this same insulin reaction is causing the majority of americans to be grossly overweight. and this is what you're fighting for. hey, if you want trans fats why don't YOU cook all of your meals from scratch and add all the freaking trans fats your HEART desires!