Col. Sanders impersonator suffers heart attack while protesting trans fats ban

A man commonly known as the “Col. Sanders impersonator” suffered a massive heart attack in Metro Council chambers yesterday during a council committee hearing on the proposed ban of some fatty acids used in the making of fast-food.

Jerry Dixon, 63, said from his hospital bed late last night that he was at City Hall to “voice my major dissent” over the proposed trans fats ban, which would have a negative economic effect on, among other fast-food restaurants, KFC.

“I just don’t know why they’d do this,” he said. “We’ve been makin’ this grub for years and the people, obviously they just love it. This is going to put us under.”
Dixon has no direct affiliation with KFC, a spokesman for Yum! Brands, the restaurant’s Louisville-based parent company, said yesterday.

“Yeah, we’re not sure who this guy is,” Sean O’Hare said. “I mean, we’ve clearly heard of him, but no, he is of no relation to Harlan Sanders or any of the Yum! Brands family.”

Food activists consider a ban on trans fats — the byproduct when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil, helping certain foods keep longer on the shelf — a progressive and protective measure to keep industries from harming their consumers in favor of lower prices. But fat people, who make up 68 percent of Kentucky’s population, consider a ban a massive setback to, among other things, freedom.

“I can eat what I want to eat, and it’d better be cheap, cause that’s the way the economy of supply and demand just is,” Larry Birkhead, a plumbing contractor who was taking a lunch break at a local Wendy’s yesterday, said. “Fast-food is American culture, through and through. I believe them putting regulations on them is anti-American.”

Dixon said he hopes Yum! Brands will hire him as its spokesman on the trans fat issue. O’Hare said the company no longer owns the rights to Col. Sanders’ image, and that hiring Dixon on would violate copyright protection law.