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Maybe it's unfair to pick on the Girl Scouts, because trans fats are all around us, from French fries to some brands of ice cream. And at least the Girl Scouts have taken trans fats out of some of their cookies (though of the eight kinds my daughter's Brownie troop sold, only Lemon Coolers and Tagalongs seemed to have none).

But that's the problem we have in risk assessments. There are certain kinds of risks - say, fears of Saddam Hussein - that galvanize us to mobilize an army and devote $1 trillion to confront the challenge. Meanwhile, we do nothing about threats that are much more likely to kill us - like trans fats peddled by cute little girls.

Actually, it's a pity that Girl Scout cookies are being sold by cherubs. If the sellers were Iranians with turbans and menacing frowns, then the authorities might be more alert to the dangers.

The Food and Drug Administration has required food companies to list trans fats in labels of packaged products, so companies are beginning to remove trans fats from their foods. Kraft, for example, has removed trans fats from all of its Oreos and many other foods.

But Americans now get 38 percent of their calories from restaurant food, and the F.D.A. so far has refused to require restaurants to disclose trans fat content. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has filed a petition asking the F.D.A. to require restaurants to disclose the presence of trans fats in their foods, as well as another petition that would in effect come close to banning manufactured trans fats altogether.

Both moves make sense. Denmark, for example, has quite successfully adopted a law stipulating that no more than 2 percent of the fats in foods sold there can be industrially produced trans fats.

The result is that if you walk into a McDonald's in Copenhagen and order a large meal of chicken nuggets and French fries, you'll get just 0.33 grams of trans fatty acids. Walk into a McDonald's in the U.S. and order the same meal, and you get 10.1 grams of trans fats.

That was the finding of a study published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine. It found huge variations: an order of fries and chicken at KFC provided almost 25 grams of trans fats in Hungary, but negligible amounts in Denmark, Russia and Wiesbaden, Germany.

To put those numbers in perspective, just five grams of trans fats per day are associated with a 25 percent greater risk of a heart attack.

Prowl a supermarket, and you see that Pop Secret Butter Microwave Popcorn has 5 grams of trans fats per serving, Keebler Chips Deluxe cookies have 1.5 grams of trans fats per cookie, and Drake's Yodels and Ring Dings have 2 grams. At Denny's, carrot cake has 3 grams.

It's difficult for the food industry to claim that trans fats are unavoidable when the Danes manage to avoid them. And there's no justification for letting restaurants inflict them on us without informing us.

Look, there are a lot of risks that we can't do much about. Brain tumors, for example. Or plane crashes. Or foreign leaders who are absolutely determined to produce nuclear weapons. But trans fats kill more Americans than any of those, and they're very easy to protect against - so I hope the Bush administration will follow the Danish model and curb the use of trans fats.

And in the meantime (now that my daughter has finished selling her cookies), here's a step you can take: Set up a neighborhood watch team to be alert for little girls intent on clogging your arteries and killing you with their sweetness.

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Maybe it's unfair to pick on the Girl Scouts, because trans fats are all around us, from French fries to some brands of ice cream. And at least the Girl Scouts have taken trans fats out of some of their cookies (though of the eight kinds my daughter's Brownie troop sold, only Lemon Coolers and Tagalongs seemed to have none).

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We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Third Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here.

Below, an essay by Hope Kurth, age 17.
How Ableism Lives On
Five-star restaurant, four family members. A hostess sets down thick, leather menus in one, two, three places before proceeding to drop a flimsy half-piece of paper in front of my brother. He scrunches his eyebrows together and glares at my parents as if to say "not this again" - the kid-menu debacle that automatically ensues when you have Down syndrome. He's 22 years old, a working man with a diploma, yet abled people always seem to have one inability: to see him as anything but a kid.

Fortunately, the world is changing - with implementations like Best Buddies, Rosa's Law and the Americans With Disabilities Act. But a couple of things are keeping America from fully including and involving people with disabilities into everyday life naturally: society's colloquial language and the style of disability advocacy.

Thankfully, Spread the Word to End the Word and similar campaigns have attempted to mark words like "retarded" as taboo (however, 56 percent of Americans don't think it's offensive to call themselves the r-word, and 38 percent don't find a problem in calling their friends it either). But left in their wake are "boom-boom," "mental" and "slow." Of course, any well-intentioned person can forget and succumb to using these words - but if we ever want to see full integration, we have to let them go.

Some say that nitpicking words like "crazy" and "lame" will just start another political correctness battle, and that there is no easy way to eliminate them. But before deeming this challenge "too hard," think about how difficult it is for 48.9 million Americans to not only have a disability, but to be reminded of it in everyday conversations.

Another problem arises in the fact that two-thirds of people claim to be uncomfortable talking to people with disabilities because they don't know how to act politely around them. This awkward silence is too often filled with well-meaning (yet meaningless) statements like "You're God's special gift." But again, people who are uncomfortable around those with disabilities aren't usually out to discriminate. However, with the rise of politicians like Donald Trump, who "mocked" a reporter with arthrogryposis, more citizens are following the path to discriminatory speech.

Lastly, viral posts about those with disabilities have lately been deemed "inspiration porn," mainly for the reason that they've been used to inspire a retweet or a reblog, but no actual action. These posts make it seem as if the only purpose of those with disabilities is to inspire abled people - not to live a fulfilling life in the way they please.

Many of us possess good intentions about disabilities - but if we really want to solve ableism in America, we have to watch our patterns of speech (even jokes) and consider taking action instead of just hitting repost.
Works Cited
Haberman, Maggie. "Donald Trump Says His Mocking of New York Times Reporter Was Misread." The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

Higgins, Karrie. "Dear Able Friends, I Am Not Your Inspiration Porn." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

"NSIP - Basic Facts: People with Disabilities." NSIP - Basic Facts: People with Disabilities. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

"20 Amazing Disability Discrimination Statistics - BrandonGaille.com." BrandonGaillecom. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

"Announcing 'The Shriver Report Snapshot: Insight Into Intellectual Disabilities in the 21st Century.' " Maria Shriver. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2016.

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Editorial Contest Winner | 'How Ableism Lives On'

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We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Third Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here. Below, an essay by Hope Kurth, age 17. How Ableism Lives On Five-star restaurant, four family members.

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Contests

One of our 2017 editorial winners wrote about China's unofficial ban on Korean cultural exports, such as the boy band Exo. Credit... Starnews, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

The challenge is fairly straightforward. Choose a topic you care about, gather evidence from sources both within and outside The Times and write a concise editorial (450 words or less) to convince readers of your view.

Because editorial writing at newspapers is a collaborative process, you can write your entry as a team effort or by yourself. When you're done, submit it using the contest form below by Thursday, April 5, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Be sure to read the rules, also below, before posting.

Our judges will then use this rubric (PDF) for selecting winners to publish on The Learning Network.

As teachers know, the persuasive essay has long been a staple of high school education, but the Common Core standards seem to have put evidence-based argumentative writing on everybody's agenda. You couldn't ask for a more real-world example of the genre than the classic newspaper editorial - and The Times publishes, on average, two of them a day.

And at a time when breaking out of one's "filter bubble" is more important than ever, we hope this contest also encourages students to broaden their news diets by using multiple sources, ideally ones that offer a range of perspectives on their chosen issue.

So what issue do you care about? Gun violence? Sexual harassment? Social media? You decide.

Good luck, and please post any questions you might have in the comments. We'll answer you there.

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Note: The submission form has been removed from this page. The contest is closed.
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Video

The New York Times's editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal provides seven tips for writing an effective editorial.

To help with this challenge, Andrew Rosenthal, in his previous role as Editorial Page editor of The Times, detailed seven pointers in the video above. And we have published related lesson plans, including " For the Sake of Argument: Writing Persuasively to Craft Short, Evidence-Based Editorials," " I Don't Think So: Writing Effective Counterarguments" and " 10 Ways to Teach Argument-Writing With The New York Times," that offer additional teaching ideas.

We have also culled a list of 401 prompts for argumentative writing organized by category, to help inspire you - although, of course, you are not limited to those topics.

We encourage you to look at both our comments on last year's winners and the winning essays themselves. They can serve as excellent models, and they cover topics from active-shooter school lockdowns to Korean television shows in China.

In addition, you can watch our free, archived webinar, featuring the Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof and Kabby Hong, a high school English teacher.

1. Use at least one Times source. You can write your editorial about any topic, as long as you use at least one source from The Times. That should pretty much open the whole world to you, as you may be surprised how much you can find in The Times.

Be advised that nytimes.com has a digital subscription system in which readers have access to five free articles each month, but after that you will be asked to become a digital subscriber. The Times also offers K-12 digital subscription plans for schools. But all Learning Network activities for students, including our daily writing prompts, as well as Times articles linked from them, are free, so you can access them without exceeding the five-article limit.

2. Use at least one non-Times source. But make sure that the source you use is a reliable one. We encourage you to find sources that offer different perspectives on an issue.

3. Always cite your sources. Our submission form contains a required field for entering your citations. We include an example as well, though you can use M.L.A. or A.P.A. styles, or just list the website URLs. Even if you use a print source or an expert interview, you must provide a citation. Readers (and judges) should always know where you got your evidence.

4. Be concise. The editorial must not exceed 450 words. Your title and list of sources are separate, however, and do not count as part of your 450-word limit.

5. Have an opinion. Editorials are different from news articles because they try to persuade readers to share your point of view. Don't be afraid to take a stand.

6. Write your editorial by yourself or with a group. If you are working as a team, just remember to submit all of your names when you post your entry. But please submit only one editorial per student. If you're submitting as part of a team, you should not also submit as an individual.

7. Be original and use appropriate language. Write for a well-informed audience, but include enough background information to give context. Be careful not to plagiarize: Use quotation marks around lines you take verbatim from another source, or rephrase and cite your source.

8. Submissions must be from students who are 13 to 19 years old, and they may come from anywhere in the world. Unlike in previous years, students can now use their entire name if they want.

9. All entries must be submitted by April 5 at 11:59 p.m. Easternusing the contest form above. If you have questions about the contest, feel free to post them in the comments section, and we'll respond to you there.

10. Follow these instructions if you need proof that you entered this contest. Within an hour of submitting your editorial, you should receive an email from "The New York Times" with the subject heading "Thank you for your submission to our Student Editorial Contest." If you don't receive the email within an hour, even after checking your spam folder, then you can resubmit your entry. Be sure your settings allow emails from nytimes.com.

After two attempts and waiting over one full day, if you still have not received a confirmation email, you can contact us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com with the email address you used in the contest form. Use the subject heading "Please send me an email confirmation for my editorial contest submission." Be sure to include your name and editorial title (or subject) in your email. You may have to wait up to a week for a reply.

11. We will use this rubric (PDF) to judge entries, and the winning editorials will be featured on The Learning Network.

" Writing an Editorial" Unit Plan, by Lindsay Thompson

" Reader Idea | He Said, She Said, I Say: A Researched Argument Essay," by Danielle Harms

" Reader Idea | Using an Op-Doc Video to Teach Argumentative Writing," by Allison Marchetti

" Reader Idea | Using Room for Debate to Teach Argumentative Writing and Discussion Skills," by Gerard Dawson and Justin Rex

" Reader Idea | An Argument-Writing Unit: Crafting Student Editorials," by Kayleen Everitt

Good luck and have fun. We welcome your questions and comments if we have omitted details that might be useful. Let us know how we can help.

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The Learning Network runs contests for teenagers all year long. See our full calendar.

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Our Fifth Annual Student Editorial Contest: Write About an Issue That Matters to You (Published 2018)

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Contests The challenge is fairly straightforward. Choose a topic you care about, gather evidence from sources both within and outside The Times and write a concise editorial (450 words or less) to convince readers of your view. Because editorial writing at newspapers is a collaborative process, you can write your entry as a team effort or by yourself.