Good for NYC; Bad for Trans Fats
This is good. I didn't expect it to happen. I would have been happy with forcing businesses to prominently display trans fat contents. This is a public health concern, just like smoking. I'm not usually this curt, but Dan Fleshler can go to hell:
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Board of Health voted Tuesday to make New York the nation's first city to ban artery-clogging artificial trans fats at restaurants -- from the corner pizzeria to high-end bakeries.
The board, which passed the ban unanimously, did give restaurants a slight break by relaxing what had been considered a tight deadline for compliance. Restaurants will be barred from using most frying oils containing artificial trans fats by July and will have to eliminate the artificial trans fats from all of their foods by July 2008.
But restaurant industry representatives called the ban burdensome and unnecessary.
"We don't think that a municipal health agency has any business banning a product the Food and Drug Administration has already approved," said Dan Fleshler, a spokesman for the National Restaurant Association.
The article's description of health risks associated with trans fat is weak, so here is a wikipedia link. The page has plenty of links to interesting research.