I think it takes an unhealthy ingredient out of the food system. People don't typically eat margarine by the spoonful, so it's not like removing cheese or soda from the market.
But you can't stop people eating unhealthily - you certainly can't legislate for it.
I think this shows you can, in some circumstances
It's not intended to stop people from eating junk food - just an artificial ingredient that has been shown convincingly to be harmful.
You also can't legislate for hereditary conditions.
No one is trying to do that.
I think my main issue with this (and any other similar ruling on either side of the pond) is the huge claims being made for improvements in public health. There is no way the statistics can be anything other than best guesses. There are simply too many variables to produce anything else.
I'm assuming you're not an epidemiologist. How can you be so sure there is no way they can have reliable statistics? Do you think the entire field of epidemiology is a fraud?
It does prove though, that every time a scientific study comes up with a "conclusion", it will only be a matter of time before another study completely disproves it.
Every time? Got stats on that? How about stats on most of the time, or half the time?
I'm not one who is bothered by scientific advances. I said a few days ago that I don't base my food and nutrition decisions on vague news reports about study results, but that's not what this is. This is a major government agency reporting the results of its review of decades of data and making a decision based on that to protect the public's health.
Teaching people (and in particular, kids) about nutrition and cooking balanced meals would surely be a better way to approach public health than telling people what they can or cannot eat?
Who says you can't do both? In many places, we are doing both. But this is a big country and not everyone agrees on whether to do that and how to accomplish it, so it's not happening overnight.
I don't really consider this "telling people what they can't eat" because most people don't add trans fats to their food, unless they're using margarine, which, according to the article, has dropped a lot in popularity recently. And I don't think it's a bad thing to encourage people to use butter, olive oil, and other natural oils instead.