NYT: New York City Plans Sharp Limits on Restaurants’ Use of Trans Fats

[DeepModem Mom]

New York City Plans Sharp Limits on Restaurants’ Use of Trans Fats
By THOMAS J. LUECK
Published: September 27, 2006

The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with plans to prohibit the city’s 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains more than a minute amount of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease.

The board, which is authorized to adopt the plan without the consent of any other agency, did not take that step yesterday, but it set in motion a period for written public comments, leading up a public hearing on Oct. 30 and a final vote in December.

Yesterday’s initiative appeared to ensure that the city would eventually take some formal action against artificial trans fats. If approved, the proposal voted on yesterday by the Board of Health would make New York the first large city in the country to strictly limit such fats in restaurants. Chicago is considering a similar prohibition affecting restaurants with less than $20 million in annual sales.

The New York prohibition would affect the city’s entire restaurant industry, by far the nation’s largest, from McDonald’s to fashionable bistros to street corner takeouts across the five boroughs.

The city would set a limit of a half-gram of artificial trans fats per serving of any menu item, sharply reducing most customers’ intake. The fats are commonly found in baked goods, like doughnuts and cakes, as well as breads and salad dressing....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/nyregion/27fat.html?hp&ex=1159329600&en=7ea802187466da30&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[TomInTib]

1. Our town was the first to ban trans-fats.

However, our ban was voluntary.

Because it just makes sense.

[fed-up]

2. “But human life is much more important than shelf life,”-from article nt

[Javaman]

3. This will be amusing to watch...

I'm all for the ban but I'm waiting for the various arguments against it. They should be interesting to say the very least.

[Stephanie]

4. That is fabulous news!

There is nothing worse. Now if the whole country would do this, and then ban high fructose corn syrup, I think we'd see some major shifts in overall health.

[Stephanie]

5. Some info about trans fats >

This article in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell opened my eyes to this issue:

http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_03_05_a_fries.htm

<snip> Among aficionados, there is general agreement that those early McDonald's fries were the finest mass-market fries ever made: the beef tallow gave them an unsurpassed rich, buttery taste. But in 1990, in the face of public concern about the health risks of cholesterol in animal-based cooking oil, McDonald's and the other major fast-food houses switched to vegetable oil. That wasn't an improvement, however. In the course of making vegetable oil suitable for deep frying, it is subjected to a chemical process called hydrogenation, which creates a new substance called a trans unsaturated fat. In the hierarchy of fats, polyunsaturated fats--the kind found in regular vegetable oils--are the good kind; they lower your cholesterol. Saturated fats are the bad kind. But trans fats are worse: they wreak havoc with the body's ability to regulate cholesterol.

According to a recent study involving some eighty thousand women, for every five-per-cent increase in the amount of saturated fats that a woman consumes, her risk of heart disease increases by seventeen per cent. But only a two-per-cent increase in trans fats will increase her heart-disease risk by ninety-three per cent. Walter Willett, an epidemiologist at Harvard--who helped design the study--estimates that the consumption of trans fats in the United States probably causes about thirty thousand premature deaths a year.

McDonald's and the other fast-food houses aren't the only purveyors of trans fats, of course; trans fats are in crackers and potato chips and cookies and any number of other processed foods. Still, a lot of us get a great deal of our trans fats from French fries, and to read the medical evidence on trans fats is to wonder at the odd selectivity of the outrage that consumers and the legal profession direct at corporate behavior. McDonald's and Burger King and Wendy's have switched to a product, without disclosing its risks, that may cost human lives. What is the difference between this and the kind of thing over which consumers sue companies every day?

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Thanks for this link, Stephanie! nt

[BuddhaGirl]

7. great news! Trans fats are poison!

n/t

[Coventina]

8. Great news! I'm all in favor of more oversight on professional food

providers.

You can't be too careful about what is put into your body.

"You are what you eat."

[KurtNYC]

9. Natural trans fat will not be limited

I stumbled over the phrase "artificial trans fats" because it implies there are natural trans fats -- so I googled and there are naturally occuring trans fats. They occur in beef, lamb and dairy. Even human breast milk contains trans fat (percentages are the ratio of trans fat to total fat): 1% in Spain, 2% in France and 4% in Germany to 7% in Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat

But overall, this limit is good news. Once something is shown to be this detrimental to health the moral thing to do is to steer people away from it. Hopefully they won't allow the kind of loophole that currently allows certain margarines to say they have "no fat" when in fact they are ALL fat (eg. serving size is .5 they then round down to zero).