NYC Bans Trans Fats

Restaurants in New York have to find a substitute for the Worst Fat Ever.

Dec 6, 2006

The mayor of NYC passed a ban on trans fats in food prepared at restaurants. The owners are upset, but the health of New Yorkers who eat out will benefit.

New York City has banned the use of trans fats in restaurants! This is good news for the consumer, if not for the restaurants. Trans fats, for the uninitiated, are an artificial fat that has a longer shelf life than healthier, natural fats. Restaurants - and especially fast food chains - like to use trans fats because of this longer shelf life, and because of they're cheaper, too. Restaurant owners say it keeps costs down and makes their food taste better.

But health officials, nutritionists, and doctors have been warning about the deleterious health effects of trans fats for years. The partially hydrogenated vegetable oil that is trans fats, is bad for you in worse ways than plain old fats from canola and corn oils (etc) because they negatively affect cholesterol levels to a higher degree. Trans fats also create free radicals in our bodies, which can lead to cancer. Further, heart disease and obesity are the end result of a combination of factors, one of which is, needless to say, eating too much fat. When I want to enjoy one of my favorite meals out while in NYC, it's nice to know my brunch won't have partially hydrogenated oil in it.

Some restaurant owners are upset because they need to fiddle with food prep and ingredients, but they have been given plenty of time (8 months for fried foods, and until July 2008 for pastries) to figure out how to do so. From what I remember, donuts and other pastries tasted pretty good before the inclusion of trans fats; those restaurants should be okay. The owners will probably threaten to raise prices as a result of time and money spent figuring out how to replace trans fats without changing the flavor of their food, but at least one national food chain already switched to using natural oils, and their stock hasn't plummeted: Wendy's fries still taste salty, crispy and great, without being fried in laboratory-concocted trans fats. The New York City restaurant economy will be just fine, and diners will have one less thing to worry about.

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The copyright of the article NYC Bans Trans Fats in Luxury Travel is owned by Jennifer W. Miner. Permission to republish NYC Bans Trans Fats in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.