I wrote a bit a couple of weeks ago about Trans fats and the fact that New York city was going to be perhaps banning trans fats in restaurants. Well it has happened. I just saw the news break and that means that today there will be stories in the news all about What trans fats are, how they are bad for us, and how much we should consume. I hope that you remember that past article as it seems that there is not healthy amount of trans fats to consume so any amount is to much. It will be interesting to see what happens now as I once heard that there are 20 or so Macdonalds restaurants in Manhattan itself let alone the other outlying boroughs.
As you probably remember trans fats are create by making hydrogenated vegetable oil, that is pumping hydrogen through Vegetable oil to give it a longer shelf life and
The Board of Health has voted to make New York the first city in the nation to ban artificial trans fats in restaurant food. The board is expected to give restaurants a slight break by relaxing what had been considered a tight deadline for compliance.
The board also ordered restaurants to standardize how they display the number of calories in dishes on their menus in an effort to combat obesity. This means that perhaps we will start to get better information on fat and calorie contents of foods everywhere so that we can make better decisions than just picking the “healthy Choice menu item at the local restaurant.
Here is a graph from the Associated Press showing some trans fat facts:
