When it comes down to it, people just don’t like to be told what to do.

As children, we refused to eat our broccoli, as teenagers we fought for extended curfews and as potbellied Chicagoland residents with appetites for indulgence as cherished as our pocketbooks, we certainly don’t appreciate some alderman telling us how to eat.

So it was no surprise when the city of Eli’s cheesecake-lore reacted to the news of Alderman Edward M. Burke’s proposed trans-fat ban for major Chicago restaurants with a nearly unanimous shriek of indignation.

“Is the City Council going to plan our menus?” Mayor Daley was quoted as saying in a July 18 article in The New York Times.

Perhaps Mayor Daley has been lucky enough to escape heart disease, which is the number one killer of Americans according to www.americanheart.org, and is largely caused by the ingestion of the cooking oils that could be banned, but the statistics show that most men his age physically can’t afford his attitude. And while angry customers will bemoan the loss of the extra smear of grease on their burgers, they are forgetting, as rebellious children tend to do, that the benefit of the greater good can be more urgent than their impulse for instant gratification. Coronary heart disease kills more Americans every year than the next four leading causes of death combined.

The idea that dying young is worth it so long as we live well just doesn’t hold up in this scenario. Those who support the use of trans-fat in major establishments not only ignorantly assume the impact of the city’s overwhelming fat-production affects only them and not the habits of younger generations, but they also contradict the fact that those who have chosen to eat foods that don’t jolt their cholesterol and slow their circulation actually enjoy the physical rewards of being healthy. We cannot ignore that a diet is as much the result of routine and familiarity as it is about selection and affordability. By fighting to keep in place the dominant system of vast and consistent deadly food provision, we are not only ensuring our own physical misfortunes, but those of younger generations as well.

Another claim that has found its way to the editorial pages of publications such as The Chicago Tribune emphasizes the notion that by giving up on traditional fried Chicago-cuisine, we are abandoning treasured American pastimes. However, the phenomenon of trans-fats is hardly a staple of American gastronomic authenticity, as its 1911’s origin, in the form of Crisco, was developed largely to save money and not necessarily to improve the quality of our food.

It’s not easy to give up something we love, especially when it comes to something we love to eat. We claim that it is our right to stuff ourselves with scientifically proven poison if we choose to, without seriously recognizing what happens to ourselves when we do. We are more than willing to express aggression against a myriad of forces we feel threaten our well being, such as terrorism, cancer, and drunken driving, and yet because of our own selfish impulses we shrink away spinelessly from one that holds the unchallenged position as our number one killer.

If we want to ensure life and health for not only ourselves, but also generations after us, we have to face the facts and take responsibility for how our treasured cities do business. And that means, every once and while, letting someone else tell us what to do.