Thursday 1 April 2010

NYC: First smoke, now salt


From The Guardian, the city that brought you the smoking ban is now bringing in the salt ban:

New York restaurant kitchens face threat of salt ban

City politician proposes £600 fines for restaurants that use salt in recipes

Over the past few years New York has gained a reputation for taking the health of its citizens seriously – or nannying them, depending on your point of view.

Now a member of the city's legislative assembly has gone a step further by introducing a bill that would ban the use of salt in restaurant kitchens.

Bill A10129 would forbid the city's chefs from using salt in any of their recipes. The ban's proposer, Felix Ortiz, a Democratic member from Brooklyn, says it would give consumers the choice about whether to add salt to their meal.

Restaurants trying to sneak a bit of sodium chloride on to the plate would be fined $1,000 (£600) every time they were caught.

Ha, ha! Gotcha. April fools!!!

Er, actually no. This is from The Guardian three weeks ago. I tried to think of an April's fool wind-up, I really did, but considering what I have to write about every day, it's impossible to come up with anything so ridiculous that it hasn't already happened, is happening or will happen.

If you want a real bit of tom-foolery, The Guardian and Tom Harris have got the goods. At least I think they're joking. It's hard to tell anymore.



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I live in New York State. Assemblyman Felix Ortiz pulls something like this out of his hat every year or so, I guess to get his name into circulation.

New York was the first state with a law banning driving while talking on a cellphone. That was Ortiz' proposal.

A few years ago, he proposed a "fat tax" long before people were taking such a thing seriously. He's also tried to ban smoking in subsidized housing. I don't know if he eventually succeeded. He's tried to ban other things as well.

Proposing bans of one kind or another has become kind of his trademark. WS.

Unknown said...

You would have thought this was a wind up Chris: Smokers breath can cause cancer in others or maybe April the first came early as I posted about the 'survey' only yesterday.

BTS said...

I loved that pie chart BigYin - for a choice of yes, no or not sure they still only achieved a response of 99%. Were the remaining 1% somewhat more scathing in their replies perhaps..?

Dick Puddlecote said...

"considering what I have to write about every day, it's impossible to come up with anything so ridiculous that it hasn't already happened, is happening or will happen"

I was going to make the exact same observation at mine. But as you have done, I won't. ;-)