Trans fat ban = nanny state?

After all, we let the government decide - and never or seldom complain - that:

• Our tap water should be chlorinated and fluoridated, even though there is considerable scientific evidence that these substances are highly toxic.

• The air we breathe be regularly fumigated with pesticides so that we might not get bittn by mosquitoes, never mind if leading WHO experts on mosquito control say that fumigation is ineffective.
  
  
• The milk we (some of us, anyway) drink is pasteurised or UHT treated, even though some health advocates tell us that raw milk is the healthiest and that heated milks cause a variety of health problems. To learn more about the benefits of “real milk”, click here.

There are lots more things that we let the government decide without even realising it. Do you know, for example, that regular flour is allowed, by law, to contain various chemical additives without having them declared?

We also let the government approve various food additives like aspartame and MSG, and ban others (which we might not know about). We let the government ban drugs like heroin, Ecstasy and now, Subutex. In fact, we expect the government to do such things. This has nothing to do with a nanny state.

To me, a nanny state is when, for example, the government dictates that pubs cannot allow smoking even though many people who go to pubs are smokers. I am not a smoker but I really feel sad that smokers are being treated like pariahs in our society.

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Nanny state bans kombucha

Here is another example of the Singapore government running a nanny state:

Some months back, the government banned kombucha, a fungus used to ferment tea and sold as a health product in health stores.

Kombucha is consumed by people who more or less know what they are taking. They had read about it in some health books. They believe what they read and they decide to take it. They even go out of their way to buy it from special health food stores. It’s not something sold in at NTUC Fairprice, which might be unwittingly consumed by people who don’t know what it is.

And it is not as if kombucha is widely acknowledged to be harmful the way trans fats are now known to be deadly. On the contrary, most health writers say wonderful things about kombucha being beneficial for all sorts of health conditions.

But, as is usually the case with matters regarding health, not everybody holds the same view.

So some people believe kombucha is harmful. The government chose to listen to this group of people and decided that no one in Singapore should be allowed to take kombucha.

This, to me, is running a nanny state - controlling what people can or cannot eat when they are educated and fully capable of finding out the implications of their food intake.

This is not the same as controlling the use of trans fats. Because trans fats are harmful substances being regularly - and most of the time unknowingly - consumed by the general population, including babies and young children, including the illiterate and uneducated who cannot read food labels.

A government that controls the use of trans fats is not running a nanny state. It is caring for the welfare of its citizens - and its guests.