A fat target for the food police

Big Brother had shouldered his way into the kitchen long before the New York City Board of Health moved Tuesday to prohibit the use of all but a tiny amount of trans fats in restaurant cooking.

Be glad he's there.

Would all the people muttering about New York's "food police" like the government to lift the rules requiring restaurant employees to wash their hands? Do they consider restrictions on pesticides, lead and arsenic -- all substances that used to regularly show up in food -- to be limits on their personal food choices?

This is not an invitation for Portland or any other Northwest city to race out and replicate New York's sweeping ban on trans fats, or its companion rule requiring fast food outlets to prominently display the caloric content of their menu items. Yet local governments ought to watch how restaurants, and their customers, respond to the new rules in New York, and soon, Chicago. It's likely this is the beginning of the end of trans fats in the American food supply.

All this is not the work of a nosy "food police." It's a result of the same education, government regulation and market forces that historically have combined to make food safer and more healthful.

Trans fat is the world's most unhealthy fat. Researchers have proven it. Most restaurants know it. Consumers are beginning to understand it. In the end, it's not the government that doesn't belong in the kitchen. It's this fat.