On Healthy Living

A Chicago alderman is floating a proposal to make it illegal for city restaurants to use trans fats, the partially hydrogenated cooking oils that are linked to clogged arteries and heart attacks.

Edward Burke, a longtime council member, says children need to be protected from unhealthy, fatty foods and that the city, named the fattest in the nation by Men’s Fitness, needs all the help it can get to slim down.

Mayor Richard M. Daley, along with many others, wonder if the council shouldn’t have bigger priorities than legislating what Chicagoans eat.

But trans is a big problem, not just in the Midwest. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has recently sued chicken slinger KFC for using trans fats in many of its products, some of which give you more trans fat in a meal than it’s considered safe to eat in a week.

It’s clear that there’s a nutritional crisis in this country, and according to another Chicago story, the battle lines are being drawn along ethnic lines. A new study of the city shows that it is full of “food deserts” where fast food restaurants are plentiful but grocery stores are scarce, limiting residents’ abilties to make healthy choices. Most of these deserts are located on the south and west sides of the city, where many blacks live.

This lack of choice indicates that people living in those areas will be more likely to die from diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart problems than more affluent city dwellers or those with more choices.

The study found that in many of these neighborhoods, the distance to a grocery store was about twice as far as the distance to a fast food restaurant. More than half a million residents live in food deserts.

Banning trans fat might not be the answer, but it seems something needs to be done from a public health standpoint to make it easier for poor people especially, but really all people, to make good food choices.

Sarah White wrote this on July 18th, 2006 and filed it under Healthy Living, Healthy Cooking, Healthy Eating, Women's Health, Men's Health |