Banning Trans Fats

Kim Severson is a staff writer for the New York Times and co-author (with Cindy Burke) of The Trans Fat Solution: Cooking and Shopping to Eliminate the Deadliest Fat from Your Diet. Recently, the NYC Health Department conducted a year-long education campaign to help restaurants voluntarily reduce trans fat. Overall, trans fat use did not decline at all.

In September of this year, the Health Department proposed a "partial" phase-out of artificial trans fat in all New York City restaurants. If passed, restaurants will have 6 months to use less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving. After 18 months, all other food items will also need to contain less than 0.5 grams of trans fat. Read the story here.

In a related story, KFC was sued in June of this year by the CSPI for their startlingly high use of trans fat. In October KFC announced it would eliminate most trans fats from its fryers, instead using soybean oil. Read the story here.

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