What do Marriott, McDonald’s and New York City have in common? They’re all moving to protect you from trans fats in your diet. The difference is the first two are voluntary initiatives aimed to create customer goodwill, while New York’s dictates your customer’s choice.

While America weighed the pros and cons of the Iraq surge strategy, New York City banned so-called “trans fats” in all food service establishments effective July 1. This aggressive assault on hydrogenated vegetable oils has an almost-militaristic feel to it, as secondary fronts are also being opened in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois and Michigan, and “voluntary” trans fat phase-outs are popping up everywhere.

Sophisticated diners debate the culinary merits of trans fats (do those fries really taste better?), but that’s not the issue. No one laments trans fats on health grounds, though they offer a marginal cost advantage in food production and preparation.

But when we recall that trans fats (now tied to unhealthy high cholesterol) were introduced as a replacement for animal fats (tied to unhealthy high cholesterol), we realize the issue is not this food input or that, but whether we as consumers have the right to make informed choices, even choices that may not be “nutritionally correct.”

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There are good arguments why we should avoid trans fats — or at least limit their intake. Still, anything can kill in the wrong dosage: take carrot juice (a gallon could cause a fatal, toxic Vitamin A overdose) or high fructose corn syrup (merely a cost-saver, and all too effective in helping our youth grow horizontally rather than vertically).

Fearing high cholesterol, New York City did what seems to come naturally to the city administration under Mayor Michael Bloomberg: It proscribed nasty trans fats from city businesses serving food, just like it dictated that its businesses may no longer allow their patrons to smoke.

If the new law seems a logical extension of the smoking ban, it is still more worrisome. With smoking, at least there is the pretense (with some research backing) that one does not just forbid the smoker to harm himself or herself, but that smoking puts others — employees and patrons of the establishment — in harm’s way. A specious argument, but with superficial merit.

Even with smoking, consumer choice should probably still rule (perhaps leavened by smoking-related health insurance for workers and superior ventilation), although there is residual resistance to laws regulating personal behavior that, hypothetically, can injure or offend others.

But with trans fats, there is pure victimless crime: The consumer can only injure himself (the cholesterol linkage implies higher risk of coronary disease). Good intentions notwithstanding, it is difficult to see how New York’s patronizing, paternalistic interference doesn’t exceed rational bounds the state should observe in prescribing what its citizens may or may not consume.

If the state, either out of benevolence or fears of a heightened burden on the health care system, wishes that its residents be healthy, aggressive information and labeling campaigns ought to do the trick.

The problem is not that trans fats are being “outlawed,” but that elected officials presume a right (and power) to “help” their citizen with lifestyle choices far beyond the proper purview of government.

An equally well-inspired city council might think it a great idea if its citizens were only allowed to purchase organic food, or forbidden to engage in a number of high-risk sexual activities. Both would fit right into the Zeitgeist of the modern liberal community — neopuritan liberalism, choice and personal freedom be damned.

Here in the nation’s capital, just before the city also banned smoking in restaurants and bars, Council Member Carol Schwartz copied the anti-smoking language and proposed to outlaw alcohol consumption in restaurants and bars.

She was roundly criticized, but her crisp sarcasm made the point better than any speech could have. Presuming legislative omniscience (and a scientific certainty that doesn’t exist), we are framing a one-size-fits-all lifestyle unbefitting a country founded on principles of liberty, freedom and individual choice.

One notes, ruefully, that the finely crafted Snickers bar is labeled as containing “partially hydrogenated soybean oil and/or hydrogenated palm kernel oil.” Better start stockpiling right now.

Jens F. Laurson is editor in chief of the International Affairs Forum. George A. Pieler is senior fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation.