Good news for the health of everyone: Those artery clogging hydrongenated crap has been banned from New York restaurants. Compliance will be tough to control. Who will, who won’t? Brooklyn customers should demand it from their local restaurants. This from New York 1:
he New York City Board of Health unanimously approved a measure that would ban trans fats from city restaurants during a meeting Tuesday morning, making New York the first city in the nation to ban the oils.
New York becomes the nation’s first city to ban artificial trans fats, which are linked to an increased risk of heart disease. Artificial trans fats are made when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil, and can be found in everything from french fries, to baked goods, to salad dressing.
"Neither the health department or the Board of Health is telling people what to eat. You will still be able to eat anything,” explained Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden. “All of the food items will be available; they just won’t have an artificial chemical in them that would increase your chance of heart attack, stroke, and death."
The board voted to give restaurants more time to make to switch to healthier oils. Restaurants will be barred from using most frying oils containing artificial trans fats by July 1, 2007 and will have to eliminate the artificial trans fats from all of its foods by July 1, 2008. Restaurants will have a three month grace period after the measure goes into effect.
Originally, restaurants were going to be given just six months to replace the oils, and 18 months to phase out the fatty ingredients altogether.
“We are trying to find ground where restaurants can comply,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “We’ll be accommodating, trying to make food safer. If we can do it without trans fats, it will save about 100 lives a year in New York City.”
The restaurant industry still says that is not enough time to make what they say will be a costly transition to alternative oils, which they say may be hard to find.
"For a lot of the restaurants that have changed over to fat free oils, it has taken two years to test, and talk with their suppliers to find those alternatives," said Sheila Weiss of the National Restaurant Association.
But the ban has the support of the American Heart Association, which initially had some concerns with it.
"We are very pleased,” said Judith Wylie-Rosset of the AHA. “And we are particularly pleased with the support that’s going to be available to the restaurants and the evaluation, because this could set the stage for further restriction of trans fat in other locations."
In another move, the board approved a measure forcing restaurants which already make the caloric content of their food items public, to list that information on their menus. It will effect about ten percent of the city’s eateries, mostly fast food and chain restaurants.
As a representative of the Association for Dressings & Sauces, I am happy to comment on your post relating to trans fat.
Trans fats are rarely found in salad dressings, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concurs. Liquid vegetable oils that are not partially hydrogenated are a primary ingredient in salad dressings. Other ingredients used in salad dressings contain only miniscule, if any, amounts of trans fat. However, some media continues to characterize salad dressings as a source of trans fat and attributes this information to the FDA, which is untrue. The Food and Drug Administration has publicly acknowledged that its earlier characterization of salad dressings as a substantial source of trans fat was inaccurate and has informed ADS of this fact and also made several corrections to its Web site to inform consumers that salad dressings are not a source of trans fat. Visit the following link to see how FDA is changing the information. http://www.fda.gov/fdac/departs/2003/503_word.html
On another positive note, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and Louisiana State University published a study in the September 2006 Journal of the American Dietetic Association that found that those who eat salads, raw vegetables and salad dressing have considerably higher levels of vitamins C, E, B6 and folic acid, all key nutrients in promoting a healthy immune system. Researchers from Iowa State University and Ohio State University published a study in the August 2004 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that showed eating salad vegetables with some added fat, such as full-fat salad dressings, promotes the absorption of lycopene, alpha- and beta-carotenes, all of which aid in the fight against cancer and heart disease. Some salad dressings also contain alpha-linolenic acid, an essential fatty acid that may protect against fatal heart attacks, and Vitamin E, which has been shown to be beneficial for the heart health of women.
Visit me anytime to talk trans fat or condiments!