On Demand
Life After Trans Fats
Dr. Sonia Angell, director of New York City's cardiovascular disease prevention and control program, talks about the city's new trans fat regulation, which goes into full effect today. And Brian bravely conducts an on-air taste test between a trans-fat-free muffin--and one with the banned substance. Plus: How are restaurants coping? And how are YOU doing? Have you discovered a suitable substitute? Comment below!
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I'm still not clear on what trans fats are! Am I using them in my cooking! I use olive oil other vegetable oils and (real) butter nothing else.Do they have trans fats.
It's funny because if I am not mistaken, trans fats came to the fore when butter was seen as evil and society said we need a butter substitute. But at any rate, you need not be a molecular biologist to know what you should and should not put in your stomach.
No Robert, they don't. Trans fats are hydrogenated fats, partially hydrogenated oils, things that make oils like solids. Around the house, you would have it in Crisco, but other than that it is in pies, cookies, etc. because it is a good preservative and gives good texture.
Hi, I have a question: can hydrogenation occur at home, for instance, if you heat up olive oil too much?
Thanks.
great job Brian chewing like a horse...you finally found your calling
What about fully hydrogenated vegetable oil--is that bad?
How much transfat would you have to eat for it to be probloematic?
No surprise the mufin tastes the same. Of course Dunkin Dougnuts is going to adapt its products to taste the same.
I second that with the chewing Joe, I thought Brian knew better!
Why do packages say no trans fat, yet it contain hydrogenated oils?
I'm trying to cook trans fat free, but find all butter crusts and biscuits not always satisfactory. Where can I purchase good oldfashioned lard to replace crisco?
An important fact that I feel is often overlooked and understated: Margarine, which we ate as the "healthy" alternative to butter is basically synonymous with transfat. So let's be clear: DON'T EAT MARGARINE. Eat butter!
I have to say that I am very torn about the ban. The Big-D democrat in me is all in favor of strong goverment regulation and good public health policy, but I also fear the overbearing nanny-state aspect of this like this and the smoking ban. Is there any philosophical basis for deciding what gets banned and what doesn't? I can think of maaaany unhealthy things, but I don't want to see them all banned. A little danger is part of the richness of life
Some processed foods will say No Trans Fat on the front but will STILL have partially hydrogentated oil on the ingrediants -- I was told this was a loop hole when a trans fat is used as a preservative verus an "ingrediant."
Any word on this?
Tell us WHY restaurants and other food services were using hydrogenated oils in the foods they sell!
According to the dunkin donuts webpage there is no trans fat in their regular blueberry muffins, nor in any of the half dozen donuts that I checked.
I think it is amazing that NYC has had the guts to take on the corporate food industry, which has done so much in so many ways to disturb our health in the interests of profit.
For the caller who calls this program a form of "fascism," I ask him to think about the "corporate food fascism" that makes unhealthy choices for us, without us ever knowing that these choices have been made. He relies on an illusion of "free choice" that cannot exist in a capitalist society.
Just wondering if those of you that wish the government would stay out of your diet would also prefer that they keep mum when there is an e.coli breakout.
Gulliani got rid of crime--
Bloomie gets rid of CRISCO!
on the "health fascism" caller, chuck:
we know through the most basic statistical mapping that poorer communities have poorer nutrition and less access to education. sorry you're trying to fuel your body on garbage. one of the great things about ny is that your privileged arrogance can walk yourself over the bridge and get some donuts in jersey. cheers.
How about Jewish Bakeries who use magarine to make foods parve?
True but who eats in restaurants everyday? I agree that the choice should be up to the consumer. Yes, educate the consumer and let her/him decide. I'm sure a trans fat loaded donut here and there isn't going to do much harm. Yes, caller, people have to change their eating habits.
Can you explain the zero grams of transfats vs. zero transfats? If it is about rounding, can you have 0.4 grams is a small cookie? Please get rid of them entirely!
What about the level of transfats allowed per portion forcing some restaurants (especially in baked goods) to reduce the amount of butter? The naturally occurring trans-fats in butter put items high in butter over the line.
Sonia, You still did not answer the last caller's question re: health facism. A person may still want the option, although unhealthy, to choose to go to a restaurant that offers transfat foods. If they do not want these unhealthy options, they may visit another restaurant. Your response that individual restaurants do not offer BOTH transfat and non-transfat options misses the point that people need to have the right to eat whatever they want. What about freedom of choice?
FYI: The FDA regulation of trans fats is that if there's less than .5 grams per SERVING, the labeling can say there is zero trans fats. However, every product with hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils has trans fats.
Is NYC adhering to this definition?
"health fascism"... Yeah, I love it when the word fascism is trotted out for virtually anything we find unpleasant.
I can't legally park my car in a PUBLIC fountain! This is clearly parking fascism!
By the way... is there going to be any regulation on the transfat in spudrays?
so now I'm craving a blueberry muffin.....
I want to open a stand that still sells fries and fried chicken made in good old-fashioned transfat oil. Could I do this if I made patrons sign a waiver before their purchase?
Coconut oil is the best to cook with.
Although mainstream media portrays olive oil as the healthiest oil, this title does not extend to cooking. Olive oil is primarily a monounsaturated fat. This means that it has one double bond in its fatty acid structure. Although a monounsaturated fat is inherently more stable than a polyunsaturated fat, the overabundance of oleic acid in olive oil creates an imbalance on the cellular level, which has been associated to an increased risk of breast cancer and heart disease. Olive oil is a smart fat to include in your diet in a non-heated form, however.
In my opinion, polyunsaturated oils, which include vegetable oils like corn, soy, safflower and canola, are the worst oils to cook with because of the trans-fatty acids introduced during the hydrogenation process, which results in increased dangers of chronic diseases such as breast cancer and heart disease.
I agree with the previous caller. Why couldnt the restaurant simply post the fact that they use Trans-fats ( like they post callories) rather than create a LAW. I agree with the previous caller that this is another step towards taking away my personal freedoms. So whats next are they going to come to my house and check my fryer?? FASCISM.
.......AND about the loophole??
The science is still not conclusive regarding what causes heart disease.
Small LDL is now thought to be the most predictive cholesterol measure for heart disease and it, like triglycerides, is associated more with sugar intake than fat intake.
Also, we should be looking into the increasing evidence that sunlight (vitamin D) deficiency has an effect on heart health.
Not only is this health fascism...it's not even scientifically sound health fascism.
donuts used to be cooked in lard -- is lard actually better for you than crisco (all vegetarian concerns aside)?
I'm so sorry to interrupt this lovefest, but since you, Brian, don't feel it encumbent upon yourself to exercise a journalistically critical voice, allow me to express my disgust with this city's council, whom Dr. Angell represents. Instead of tackling head-on real problems, such as affordable housing, corruption, police early-retirement, just to name a few, our pols insult my and every New Yorker's intelligence by violating the free market and taking away our right to choose, bashing bakeries and ripping restaurants with burdensome and expensive regulations that, in this day of rising food costs, will only rise that much more. All else I can say is, "Long live term limits!"
The government does a lot for safety and health.
Safety in the workplace.
Safety for toys, cars and other good we buy.
Safety in food and medications.
How many people question a government's right to ban carcinogens, even if they don't actually cause cancer in each and every person with whom they come in contact? Well, why stop at cancer? If heart disease is a bigger killer, why not ban them?
I think that real issue here is that it is not the Federal Government that is doing the banning. Many people are aghast that a municipal government is doing this.
I suggest a show on this particular aspect of this issue. What are roles of municipal, state and the national government when it comes to public health? What slips through the cracks? What is the traditional way it is done? What does the law actually say?
Regarding the question of what people used before crisco and transfat - the answer is rendered animal fat aka lard!
Hence my question regarding where can one find old fashioned lard to purchase to replace crisco.
Shorter Chuck: I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Regarding the comment that people should have the choice, and the city shouldn't make the choice for us:
1. It is not a meaningful choice because
a. There is not a good way for people to have good information about what fats are in their foods
b. How likely is it that people would PREFER transfats in their foods as opposed to other fats
c. Is this an important option to give people?
d. If we assume that it is cheaper and easier for food producers to use transfats, few of them would use the better, more expensive products, and therefore people already do not have a choice
2. The people, represented by their city government and given the lack of meaningfulness in the choice, have an interest in having a healthier population for many reasons, the most pragmatic of which is healthcare costs
if transfat pruducts were developed as a substitutes, weren't they formulated to taste like the products whey were substiutes for? if so, woulnn't going back to the orginal ingredients have minimal affect on taste?
is this a bit like asking if substituting sugar for corn syrup would taste OK?
anyone who says this is a fascist imposition on consumers and big brotherism is wearing ideologically locked in handcuffs on the brain. Trans-fats were imposed by big businesses. Consumers never had a choice. Now they do have one.
My Bose headphones amplify Brian's disgusting chewing perfectly...
Jennifer, you can get leaf lard at the Union Square Greenmarket, from Flying Pig Farms, and perhaps a couple other stands.
Use of the word fascism is not associated with simple unpleasantness-- stubbing my toe is unpleasant, but has nothing to do with fascism. However, government controls on individual rights for individuals who are not infringing upon anyone else's, should be called exactly what it is: fascism.
There is nothing inherently bad about a blueberry muffin! Ingredients are totally natural -- flour/baking powder/salt, sugar (don't need much), butter, eggs, blueberries. I don't know why the DD muffin has 400 calories but I suppose it's the size. Evrything has calories -- it depends on how your body uses those calories. Of course huge muffin will have more calories than something smaller. So enjoy a smaller blueberry muffin -- or eat half. Or eat the whole thing, eat a salad for lunch and go for a brisk walk afterwards. Burn off those calories!
If you'd like, I'll use a more gentle term, even: "Nanny State."
I am all for helping stave off heart disease, but my 8-year-old son has severe food allergies to dairy, nuts and peanuts. I'm concerned about restaurants using more peanut oil in their fryers and products that had been made with margarine, that my son could eat, now having butter, which he can't. If you've ever told an 8-year-old he can't have the french fries in the place in which we're dining, you can understand my concern. Does the city have any concern for people with common food allergies?
Repub101,
Government control is not fascism. It may be bad, but it's not fascism. It's the same way that all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. Fascism is a very particular political system. The kings of Assyria and the Egyptian pharaohs were oppressive and restrictive of personal freedoms, but they weren't fascists. The French monarchs restricted the rights of people tremendously to the point that you could go to jail if you created a length of fabric that wasn't created according to guild guide lines, but they weren't fascist.
I'm not saying government control is something that doesn't matter or isn't important. I'm not criticizing your being against the ban or government interference, I'm questioning the word choice. People use the word fascism because they want to emotionally charge their rhetoric to generate images of marching storm troopers and hanging banners with Nazi emblems.
You consider "Nanny State" to be a euphemism for "fascism", but it isn't. Nanny state would simply just be a more accurate description of what this is.
Hey, everyone, don't get upset. Like all Bloomberg initiatives, the enforcement of this will soon end. (Altho some are not all his, for example, idling limos, use of cell phones while driving, etc.)
I don't think there's anything good about transfats, but my question is, what's next? What is the medical community going to decide next that is unacceptable for us to eat? She mentioned how butter isn't the best fat. Really? Are they going to decide that I have to eat low-fat? Has she read Good Calories Bad Calories? It's the bad science and the scarey power of the medical profession that has made our country so unhealthy. I do not have faith that they are going to be able to make the best decisions about what I can and can not eat. They sure haven't done it in the past. We have trans-fats in our diet because they said we shouldn't eat butter! They continue to say we need to eat low-fat, which really means high-carb and unhealthy.
I'm mad at the community of experts who told my father with heart disease in the 1970s to eat trans-fat magarine instead of butter. Now they've changed their minds. Too late for him..he died of a heart attack. I am wary of anything they say now.
I am furious and insulted by your trans-fat discussion this morning. Your woman speaker obviously knows nothing about baking or cooking. We in the restaurant business take this matter very seriously. To suggest that you can willy-nilly substitute one fat for another without changing texture or flavor is absurd. I fear that this new policy is about more bucks for Bloomberg's budget rather than concern for New Yorkers' waistlines. What's next, Bloomberg? Flip-flops outlawed for giving people bad posture? Please, Brian, give the other side a chance to speak.
Paulo, You've presented many examples of what you claim fascism is not, and yet you haven't given a clear definition of what fascism IS. If you define fascism, I think you will find that this system has much more in common with the examples you described, and the controls I decry. The basic common denominator is the sacrifice of individual rights in favor of a centralized government or dictator. Now, I can understand why this sort of word choice would be controversial. Yet those who disagree seem to attack the word choice and not the ideas expressed by them.
It is a bit of a joke that this may actually make New Yorkers healthy. Are trans-fats allowed in soup kitchens?
Well, fascism (as stated by Benito Mussolini who coined the term) is the merger of the corporation and the state. Fascism also has a very strong nationalistic and often (though not necessarily) a racist element to it. To be sure, centralized authority is an element of fascism as well.
You say that the "basic common denominator is the sacrifice of individual rights in favor of centralized government or dictator" (and you're right), but calling that basic common denominator "fascism" is a misnomer. Fascism is a specific political system that shares that same common factor with the other systems I gave as examines. Communism also shares that common point, but communism isn't fascism either.
And just to clarify: I'm not calling this misuse of the word a conservative thing. If anything, liberals more often misuse the word than conservatives. But the ultimate point is that people want to emphasis the gravity of their argument, so they want to pick a word that represents the most gross extreme. In the US, most people agree that Nazi Germany was about as close to pure evil as a state could be, and so people reference Nazi Germany and Hitler to rail against whatever aspect of that place and time that they see in the thing they are arguing against now. But in doing so, we have to be careful that we don't pervert the meaning of words that already have distinct meaning.
[29] olive oil comes in 2 forms, regular and extra light. The extra light has a higher smoke point [cooking heat temp], and will therefore remain more intact to it's original chemical composition of hydrogens.
[45] grapeseed oil [i buy at TJoe's] also has a higher smoke point, and is said to be very good not only at helping to lower LDL, but also help raise HDL levels [the good cholesterol, often associated with a longer, healthy life span]
The grapeseed oil is also taste neutral, so it doesn't really add much, if any flavor that i detect, when cooking or using for salad dressings. I've also used it for sweet potatoe and regular homemade fries, and it's fine.
**i also have food allergies to nuts, and even canola, so i'm even reading hot chocolate packages, & looking for mid-oleic ingredients that comes from GM modified sunflower contributions. AND that's exactly why i learned how to cook - survival, basically.
I did read in Redbook years ago, that several overlapping proteins from nuts are also in the shells of shellfish, so if that's any help..
Finally, if I may give some really good cooking tips - most importantly - use as little salt as possible, so that you can taste the original ingredients and this also forces you to cook in layers, rather than all the stuff at once. A little more time consuming, but MUCH tastier.
Perhaps I missing something here, but is it a requirement that people eat in restaurants? I think it would be better (use of public money) for the government to promote a healthier lifestyle.
My wife and I were watching an old SNL rerun (George Carlin was the guest host). Her first comment was about how skinny the people (Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, etc.) were compared to today.
I agree that eating healthier is a good thing, but the approach can't be forced down our throats. How about smaller portions and more exercise. Now there is an idea!!!
- Joe
My understanding of trans fat's particular breed of nastiness(paraphrased from memory -- sorry) is that its presence interferes with the body's ability, in the production of anti-inflammatory molecules, to use all those well-celebrated Omega 3s we've been consuming.
Why do restaurants fry with trans fats. I thought they're advantage was staying solid when unrefrigerated, like Crisco, but frying fat is liquid anyway.
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