NY Proposed Ban On Trans-Fats

The proposed ban on foods that contain trans-fats, in New York, will likely affect the entire country. All restaurant’s, including national chains such as McDonald’s Corp., KFC, and Dunkin’ Donuts would be required to remove most of the trans-fats from their foods and list calories for each item on their menu boards.

Many smaller restaurants and chains have already begun or completed the changes to a more healthy menu. Other large chains continue to “test” alternate cooking oils, but have not yet made changes, chain-wide.

The reason that the proposed ban in New York could affect the rest of the industy is that most restaurants use pre-cooked or partially cooked and prepared foods from suppliers that also contain trans-fats. If suppliers to the largest chains make the switch to accommodate businesses in New York, it would be economicaly beneficial to make the changes for all of the businesses that they supply.

A public hearing will be held on October 30, 2006 in New York.  The proposed deadline to lower trans-fat levels in cooking oils and fats is July 1, 2007. The deadline for all other foods would be one year later. These are very aggressive deadlines. 6 to 7 billion of the 22.2 billion pounds of edible fats and oils shipped domestically in 2005, are hydrogenated to some degree and therefore could be scrutinized, said Robert M. Reeves, president of the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils. “Many people have the erroneous assumption that it would take a few weeks of research and we can turn these products out, but nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.

“If it were easy to do, it would have been done already,” he said, calling the proposed bans to speed up the process as misguided. “If the solutions could come rapidly, they would.”

The New York proposal follows an industry effort to voluntarily switch to healthier oils and a similar proposal made earlier this year by Chicago Alderman Ed Burke. That measure has been tabled to give more time for restaurants to work toward their own voluntary measure.