NEW YORK – New York on Tuesday became the first city in the nation to ban artery-clogging artificial trans fats at restaurants, leading the charge to limit consumption of an ingredient linked to heart disease and used in everything from french fries to pizza dough to pancake mix.
In a city where eating out is a major form of activity – either for fun or out of hectic necessity – many New Yorkers were all for the ban, saying health concerns were more important than fears of Big Brother supervising their stomachs.
“I don’t care about what might be politically correct and what’s not,” said Murray Bader, nursing a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts on Tuesday morning. “I want to live longer!”
Toni Lewis, catching a quick dinner at McDonald’s before her daughter’s piano lesson on the eve of the vote, acknowledged that yes, it might be an intrusion for the city to tell people what they can and can’t put into their stomachs. But, she added, it was a welcome one.
“This is New York,” she said. “People eat out a lot. We don’t have a choice. We need someone to make it a healthier proposition.”
Health and nutrition groups say artificial trans fats clearly contribute to heart disease. Studies have shown they raise bad cholesterol and lower the good kind. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, the main form of artificial trans fats, is used for frying and baking and turns up in a host of processed foods: cookies, pizza dough, crackers and pre-made blends like pancake mix.
“It’s basically a slow form of poison,” said David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center. “I applaud New York City, and frankly, I think there should be a nationwide ban.”
Not everyone agrees with Katz – he’s gotten angry e-mails calling him and colleagues the “food police” and saying, “If I want to eat trans fats, that’s my inalienable right.” To which he responds: “Would you want the burden of asking your restaurant whether there’s lead in the food? Whether there’s arsenic in the bread? For all I know, maybe arsenic makes bread more crusty. But it’s poison.”
Some industry representatives were not happy. Charles Hunt, executive vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association, said the city had overstepped its authority by ordering restaurants to abandon an ingredient permitted by the FDA.
“This is a legal product,” he said. “They’re headed down a slippery slope here.”
The Board of Health, which passed the ban unanimously, did give restaurants a minor break by relaxing the proposed deadline. Restaurants will now be barred from using most frying oils containing the fats by July 2007 and will have another year to eliminate them from all foods.
At Le Perigord, a tony, sedate French restaurant favored by diplomats from the nearby United Nations, owner Georges Briguet is a big fan of the trans-fats ban, and even says he’d consider putting calorie counts on his own upscale menu – though it’s only chains with standardized items that would be affected.
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