Big Apple no longer Fat City

If they can ban trans fat there, they can ban it anywhere.

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Read more: New York, Politics, News, Katharine Mieszkowski

Dec. 6, 2006 | Holy doughnut holes! The New York City Board of Health voted Tuesday to ban artificial trans fats in restaurants, making it the first major American city to phase out the kind of fats that were once ubiquitous in such consumer products as margarine and Crisco. By July 1, 2007, everyone from KFC to Tavern on the Green will have to stop using most frying oils containing the artery cloggers, and by July 1, 2008, they will have to eliminate the artificial fats from all the rest of the foods they serve, such as baked goods.

Chicago is also considering banning trans fats, while the small, affluent hamlet of Tiburon, Calif., convinced all restaurants to ditch them voluntarily years ago. But New York's restrictions are precedent setting -- and the city's health board also passed a requirement that fast food chains, which now voluntarily provide calorie information to customers, must post the calorie counts on their menus and menu boards. Diners will soon be confronted with the startling caloric difference between medium and a large fries, when deciding what to order for the dinner.

Nutritionists such as New York University's Marion Nestle supported both the trans fat ban and the calorie labeling in New York, yet remain skeptical about the impact these efforts will have on overall public health in the city. Nestle, a professor in New York University's department of nutrition, food science and public health and a prominent critic of the food industry, talked to Salon about what banning trans fats in restaurants will -- and won't -- do to New Yorkers' waistlines, not to mention the taste of their French fries.

What exactly are trans fats?

They're artificial fats that are created when normally unsaturated vegetable oils are hydrogenated, which is more chemistry than anyone wants to know. Hydrogenation does two things. It makes the oils more saturated, which is bad, and also produces an artificial kind of unsaturated fat that acts like saturated fat in the body, but may be even worse for you in raising the risk of heart disease.

What foods have trans fats?

You can't tell. When the FDA said in January of this year that food companies had to put trans fat information on food labels, the trans fat miraculously disappeared from processed food. They took them out. All that means is that they used a different kind of oil that wasn't hydrogenated. The FDA rules didn't apply to restaurants. The restaurants were free to continue using to use it.

So why do restaurants keep using the stuff?

It's more stable. It's a little cheaper. And sometimes you can fry things to higher temperatures, and you can reuse the oil more often. All of those are good reasons for getting rid of it. There are plenty of substitutes.

Will taking it out make my French fries taste different?

We're not talking about taste. All frying oils taste the same, except for olive oil. If you were going to do a taste test between soy oil and canola oil, you think people could tell the difference? You can tell if it's olive oil, but that's about the only one that has any flavor.

Will banning trans fat in restaurants have an impact on the overall health of the people of New York?

Who knows? I don't have any idea. It's not going to do anything about obesity, and in that sense this is what I would call a "calorie distractor." The food will have exactly the same number of calories. There are predictions that this will save 300 lives a year of people who are at risk of heart disease. I have no idea whether that's true or not. But it's a health measure that the public doesn't have to worry about. They don't have to think about it. They can just go and eat fried food. Is that going to encourage them to eat fried foods? I hope not.

Will diners think that fried restaurant food is healthier than it is because it is now trans-fat free?

Probably. That's been the experience with health claims on food packages: "Ooh! It doesn't have any trans fat, so it doesn't have as many calories!" That would be a false interpretation. It might have a small effect in reducing my risk for heart disease. How small, how big -- nobody knows. But trans fat is something that is completely unnecessary in the food supply. Saturated fats are a normal part of the fats that are in plants and animals. This is removing something that never should have been in the food supply.

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