While I am pondering my need to lose 25 pounds the good folks at the Indiana State Fair are paying lip service to the health police this year by frying their Oreos, peanut butter cups, and Snickers bars in trans-fat free oil. What do you make of this development? The money quote: "This is a slice of heaven,” said Ryan Howell, 31, as he cradled his Combo Plate, which, for the record, consists of one battered Snickers bar, two battered Oreos and a battered Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup — all deep-fried in oil that is trans-fat free, thank goodness." And if Mr. Howell chooses he can wash his combo plate down with something just as deadly....
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I made my way out to Coney Island this weekend, a hotbed of deep-fried, greasy fair food if there ever was one. How reassuring it was then, as I stood in line for a hot dog, to find out via a hand-scrawled note on a paper plate–cum-sign, that my cheese fries were "100 per cent 'trans fats' free." Then again, they might not have been. According to ABC News, there's some wiggle room in the claim: Federal regulations allow food labels to say there's zero grams of trans fat as long as there's less than half a gram per serving. And many packages contain more than what's considered one serving. "The problem is that often people eat a lot more...
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Fran McCollough, who wrote the book on the subject (The Good Fat Cookbook), has a persuasive letter in today's Times urging a return to sanity on the whole butter-transfat uproar. Her coup de grace: "These ignorant food police mandates will soon lead us to ban mother's milk, loaded as it is with "bad" things: cholesterol, saturated fat, sugar and trans fat." Previously: Trans Fat Fight Claims Butter as a Victim...
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Cities like New York have already banned artificial trans-fat for health reasons, although scientists think natural trans fat might actually turn out to be beneficial. Because of an FDA ruling that says products with half a gram or more of trans-fat "can’t be called trans fat-free, even if butter is the only fat," companies like Starbucks are making their suppliers cut out butter to make their product labeling ("no trans-fat!") easier. From Trans Fat Fight Claims Butter as a Victim, by Kim Severson of the New York Times: This is an important issue because anything made with animal fats will have trans fats and make it impossible to claim trans fat-free,” said Marion Nestle, nutrition professor at New York University....
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Yay Starbucks for ridding its milk supply of the controversial artificial growth hormone rBGH. (Apparently last month, they stopped selling pastries made with trans fats at half of their locations. Which half, we wonder? And what about the other half?) Spokesman Brandon Borrman says the company boosted its hormone-free milk percentage from 27 to 37 percent this month and will keep going until all the milk is hormone-free. So far, they've found hormone-free milk suppliers in Northern California, New England, New Mexico, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. It's especially telling that Borrman mentioned that the action isn't necessary for Starbucks' overseas locations because the supplement is not allowed in "most other nations." Taiwan and Mexico never allowed Starbucks to...
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