USA: New York City bans most trans fat from restaurants.

New York City's board of health on Tuesday (December 05) voted to phase out most artificial trans fats from restaurants, forcing doughnut shops and fast-food stands to remove artery-clogging oils from their cooking. The law will require McDonald's and other fast-food chains that have not already eliminated trans fats to do so by July 2007. They will be given a six-month grace period before facing fines. Makers of doughnuts and other baked goods will be given until July 2008 to phase out trans fats. "Trans fats increase your risk of heart attack, stroke and death and they don't have to be there, so it's important that we eliminate them and we've made tremendous progress in doing that. I think, just from having this debate we've seen a number of national chains removing trans fat, have much more information about it and I'm confident that most items sold by July of next year will not have trans fat and that's going to mean that New Yorkers live longer and healthier lives," New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden told a news conference. Trans fats increase those health risks by increasing bad cholesterol and reducing good cholesterol. Frieden said that New York City expects to withstand any lawsuits challenging the ban, and said the action was well within the jurisdiction of the board of health. New York City restaurants were previously encouraged by the Department of Health to phase out their use of trans fats. However, according to the Department of Health's director of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Control, Dr. Sonia Angell , these attempts, coupled with education programmes failed. "But we found at the end of this campaign, that the proportion of restaurants that continued to use artificial trans fat in oils that they were using for cooking, for baking and for frying remained the same. So artificial trans fat, we found, is not something that we can get restaurants to move away from, from a simple request," she said. Large restaurant chains like McDonald's and Wendy's have already begun the elimination of trans fats. Even though many of the smaller restaurants, like the "Skylight Diner" in Manhattan will have until July 2007 to phase out some of the unhealthy trans fats, manager Teddy Papas doesn't believe it will have an adverse financial affect on his business. "I don't buy that much, I don't buy in bulk as much as the big, large companies do, like for example, McDonald's, Burger King. Say if I buy ten cases of something a week, the difference will probably be a dollar or two per case, which is not much. For them it's a big problem," said Papas. New Yorkers are mostly in agreement over the ban. Jay Trahan believes it will be beneficial for his daughter. He said, "My daughter over here, all she eats is that McDonald's stuff and I really don't like to, like her to eat that stuff." Joan Dupont wasn't convinced about the way that the Board of Health went about imposing the ban, but she favours the health benefits. "They shouldn't tell them what they should not eat, but they're going away about it the wrong way, but they're looking out for other people that should eat healthy. It's not a bad thing, just to eat healthy." In a separate vote, the board of health also ordered restaurants to standardize how they display the number of calories in dishes on their menus in an effort to combat obesity. That law, to take effect July 1, applies to restaurants that already report the calorie counts and requires them to display the numbers on menus and menu boards. It is expected to affect about 10 percent of New York City restaurants, including many fast-food establishments.

ITN Source | December 6, 2006

Tags:. .prevention. .disease. .standardize. .healthy. .healthier