“Each year, trans fat causes anywhere from 72,000 to 228,000 heart attacks, 50,000 of which are fatal,” says Julie Greenstein, deputy director of health promotion policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). “This translates into about 1,400 to 4,600 heart attacks and about 1,000 deaths annually in Maryland alone. Getting trans fat out of restaurants could save roughly half those lives.” A true diet detective and proud of it, Greenstein has been advocating for full disclosure of trans fat content for more than a decade.
In Washington, D.C., Councilwoman Mary Cheh introduced the Trans Free D.C. Act of 2007. As of late March, the bill remained in committee with no scheduled hearings, but Greenstein says the D.C. bill is just one of the latest examples of a national movement to eliminate artificial trans fats.
While Greenstein is confident the D.C. government will move in the right direction, she believes the U.S. government could and should be doing more: “Even though the research is out there and everyone agrees that trans fat is bad for you—it raises the bad cholesterol and decreases the good cholesterol—the Food and Drug Administration has not moved to get this banned from food products,” Greenstein says. “It isn’t just that the FDA isn’t moving fast enough; it’s that it’s dragging its feet.”
Made through a process known as partial hydrogenation, which turns liquid oil into solid fat, trans fats are substituted for saturated fats in commercial baked goods to add shelf life. Trans fat is also found in fried foods, salad dressing and other prepared items. In a recent New York Times article, Dr. Joshua Lipsman of Westchester County, N.Y., conveyed a simple metaphor for its effect on your health: “Trans fat does to the body what bacon grease does to a kitchen sink; the stiffer and harder the fats become, the more they clog the arteries.”
Officials nationwide are seeing the benefits of banning too, says Greenstein. Montgomery County, Md., became the first county in the country to ban trans fat in restaurants in 2007. Brookline, Mass.; King County (Seattle), Wash.; and Louisville, Ky., followed quickly with bans of their own. “Both New York City and Philadelphia have already implemented phase one of their bans without any glitches,” Greenstein reports. “New York is even reporting close to a 100 percent compliance rate. Fortunately, Maryland, like an increasing number of states, counties and cities across the nation, is doing something about it. In March, the city council in Baltimore unanimously passed a bill banning trans fat in restaurants, and there’s talk in Virginia of removing it from schools, so there is definitely movement in this area as well as around the country.”
Given this progress, is the day of the trans fat–free McDonald’s french fry on the horizon? In 2002, McDonald’s promised to switch to a cooking oil with less trans fat, but went back on its word a year later. However, “McDonald’s is making progress,” Greenstein says. “They are coming around.” In Denmark and several other countries, Mickey D’s has already switched to healthier frying methods by eliminating artificial trans fat entirely. The Harvard School of Public Health reports “popular margarine brands Promise and Olivio have been virtually trans fat–free for several years.” It’s not only margarine that’s feeling the weight of a trans fat–free ban; the Harvard report cites other popular brands as well. Frito-Lay products Doritos, Cheetos and Tostitos, among others, no longer contain this “bad fat.” Tyson Foods sells trans fat–free frozen chicken products. You won’t find it in the dishes at Ruby Tuesday’s or Legal Sea Foods anymore, and Whole Foods has never sold products made with partially hydrogenated oils. Even the beloved Oreo no longer has a measurable trans fat content.
But why so much uproar over something that seems so straightforward? “No one disagrees with us on the science,” says Greenstein. “There will be a temporary increase in cost, but it will be very minor. In my opinion, the reason some organizations oppose the banning of trans fat is that they don’t want to see mandates passed in any area.”
Victoria Griffith, director of quality assurance for Clyde’s Restaurant Group, which has 11 restaurants in the Washington area, agrees. “Everyone knows that trans fat has to go, and most [restaurant] people are moving to eliminate it as quickly as they can,” she says. “The difficulties in doing that mostly involve supply, so a lot of the local governments have done it in phases, to affect things that they could without undue challenges to the restaurant operators.”
While no one disputes the statistics that indicate the harmful effects of trans fat on the human body, not everyone agrees that the government should be the problem solver. Some of the opposition is based on different attitudes toward control. Last year, a scholar from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, labeled the efforts to regulate trans fat “more nanny-state foolishness,” and in 2006, another Cato author called CSPI “an activist, puritanical organization more interested in generating headlines and scolding Americans than in dispensing sound nutritional advice.”
Asked if such statements provoke Greenstein, and the fact that people call her and groups like hers “the food police,” she laughs. “We’re trying to make Americans healthier and able to have better food choices,” she says. “Many high-quality restaurants do not use trans fats, and cooking schools, in their training, are cooking without using trans fat, and letting their chefs-in-training know that trans fat is very harmful and that they shouldn’t use it.” She says that the National Restaurant Association knows “trans fat is bad, but they don’t want to see a mandate against restaurants. Getting rid of trans fat is what most of their customers want.
“Trans fat also appears to promote diabetes and obesity. Those illnesses and deaths are unnecessary, and many could be prevented by legislation that would phase out trans fat. You could save hundreds of lives at virtually no cost to citizens and the state, and only a temporary, modest cost and inconvenience to restaurants. The cost of not passing these bans is far too great.”
