How could the FDA allow us to keep pumping high-fructose corn syrup into our gullets now that we all understand it’s a contributor to the spike of obesity over the past 30 years? Why do we still sell alcohol, a product that is by any measure more unhealthy than the small amounts of trans fats average Americans consume?

The CDC also contends if you want to prevent heart disease the most important thing you can do is: “Don’t smoke. If you smoke, quit as soon as possible.” Yet our own president (African-American men, incidentally, are at the highest risk for heart disease) may be inhaling tobacco in the White House—a substance far more toxic than trans fats. Around 443,000 people die from smoking every year.

Now, Obama could argue that—until very recently—there was no guiding principle in American governance that impels him to try and make sure that every citizen is living salubriously. Maybe, like many other Americans, Obama deems the sensorial benefits of his (one-time?) habit worth the health risk. Maybe I feel the same way about my Häagen-Dazs. As with smoking, there is no lack of transparency when it comes to the inherent dangers of too much trans fats.