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NYC Considering Ban on Trans Fat
If approved, New York's ban would only affect restaurants, not grocery stores, and wouldn't extend beyond the city limits. But experts said the city's food service industry, with 24,600 establishments, is so large that any rule change is likely to ripple nationwide.
"It's going to be the trendsetter for the entire country," said Suzanne Vieira, director of the culinary nutrition program at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I.
  McDonald's french fries, which have been cooked in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil since the company abandoned beef tallow in 1990, are seen in New York on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2006. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is the primary source of artificial trans fats, and on Monday, Oct. 30, 2006, New York City's Board of Health will hold its first public hearing on a plan to make New York the first U.S. city to ban restaurants from serving food containing artificial trans fats. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) (Mark Lennihan - AP) |
Richard Lipsky, a spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, said many New York eatery owners rely on ingredients prepared elsewhere, and aren't always aware whether the foods they sell contain trans fats.
Consumer reaction remains to be seen.
New Jersey state Sen. Ellen Karcher said her office was flooded with threatening phone calls after she proposed a similar trans fat ban in early October. A proposed ban in Chicago was ridiculed by some as government paternalism run amok.
Dr. Leslie Cho, medical director for preventative cardiology and rehabilitation at the Cleveland Clinic, said people might be less upset if they knew how bad trans fats are for the body.
"I don't know anything about politics, but what I tell my patients is that they should not eat any type of artificial trans fat," she said.
Do they listen?
"The majority of the people I deal with have had stents or bypass surgery," she said. "They are kind of motivated to change their lives."
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