Fat Tax, Fat Chance

Breakfast cereals like Froot Loops, Cap’n Krunch, Cocoa Puffs, and Lucky Charms, and many other children’s foods such as Oreo Cookies, Eggo Waffles, Jif Peanut Butter, frozen pizza, frozen french fries, and hundreds of breads and baked goods, contain trans fats. Trans fats, or partially hydrogenated oils, increase shelf life and are cheap, so their use is advantageous to manufacturers. However, epidemiological evidence suggests that trans fats account for about 100,000 premature deaths from cardiological disease in the United States each year.