TRANS FATS IN THE US
- THE MOVEMENT GROWS
Trans fats in the US - from labelling to bans
On 1 January 2006, the US became the second country to legislate trans fat labelling, following similar legislation in Canada that took effect in December 2005. Since then, however, efforts to curb the intake of trans fats in the US have moved from labelling to bans.
New York City was the first to ban trans fat. Members of the city's Department of Health voted unanimously on 5 December 2006 to impose a trans fat ban on the city's restaurants with effect July 2007. And by July 2008, the ban will extend to packaged foods as well.
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On 8 February 2007, the Philadelphia City Council also voted unanimously to ban trans fat from the city's restaurants by 1 September. This makes Philadelphia the second major city to ban trans fats in the US.
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Los Angeles next to ban trans fats in the US?
As of February 2007, other major cities considering a ban on trans fats in the US include Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Seattle and Louisville.
Meanwhile, let's not forget Tiburon, a small city in the San Francisco Bay area in Northern California, where the whole movement against trans fats in the US started.
In 2004, Stephen Joseph and his BanTransFats campaign got Tiburon, to become America's first trans fat-free city. There was no official ban, but restaurants throughout the city agreed to stop using trans fats and they displayed large stickers with the words “We use trans fat free cooking oil!”
This was intended to be an inspiration and model for other towns and cities. It has clearly worked.
States to ban trans fats in the US
It's not just the towns and cities that got inspired, however. Legislators in several US states have called for a trans fats ban. As of February 2007, at least 13 states are planning to ban trans fats in the US. They are:
- Washington
- California
- Connecticut
- Florida
- Massachusetts
- Maryland
- Mississippi
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New York
- Rhode Island
- Texas
- Virginia
A nation-wide movement against trans fats in the US
Three states – California, New Hampshire and New York – have suggested that the ban apply to both school cafeterias and restaurants.
Florida, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia will consider proposals to prohibit trans fats in schools.
Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and Rhode Island are focused on eliminating trans fats in restaurants.
Said Connecticut Senate Minority Leader Pro Tempore John McKinney (R) in December when he announced his co-sponsorship of a bill for the Connecticut General Assembly: “By forcing some of the world’s largest food chains and restaurants to use healthier alternatives in their food preparation, New York City has paved the way for what I hope will be a national movement to improve health quality of the food we eat in restaurants.”
Political consensus against trans fats in the US
Also significant about the campaign against trans fats in the US is that the issue has support from both the Republican and Democrats. Politics don’t come into play here. In Massachusetts, a Democrat proposed a trans fat ban, while in California, a Republican lawmaker took the lead. The New York City ban initiated by Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Also, the New York experience has been that asking restaurants to voluntarily eliminate trans fat did will not produce any significant results in eliminating trans fats in the US.
Erica Lessem, spokeswoman for New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said that after efforts were made in 2005 to encourage restaurants to drop trans fats, “use (of trans fats) remained common and has not declined substantially, despite the Trans Fat Education Campaign.”
This was no doubt due to the fact that, unlike packaged food, restaurant food were not affected by US trans fat labelling laws that came into effect on 1 Janaury 2006.
Said Michael F. Jacobson, the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI): “When trans fats labeling went into effect in the supermarket, large food manufacturers competed against each other to see who could get rid of artificial trans fat the fastest. But restaurants didn’t have labeling as an incentive to change so they’ve needed other incentives: a lawsuit here, a municipal phase-out proposal there.”
Everyone's against trans fats in the US
Except, of course, the representatives of the margarine and hydrogenated oils industry, just about everyone else is joined in the effort to eliminate trans fats in the US. Consumer advocates, scientists, fast food chains like McDonald's, KFC and others, hotels, airlines, theme parks like Disney and Universal Studios… as well as city, state and Federal legislators are all working towards the same end.
Key players in efforts to curb the intake of trans fats in the US include:
- Stephen Joseph of bantransfats.com. In 2003, Stephen Joseph raised national awareness about trans fats when he filed a law suit againt Kraft Foods to have them remove trans fats from its Oreo cookies.
- Mary Enig from the University of Maryland, an expert on the chemistry of oils and fats. She had been highlighting the harm of trans fats in the US since the late 1970s, often fighting government officials and food industry executives in the process.
- Walter Willet, researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has conducted numerous large scale studies that examined, among other things, the effects of trans fats in the US.
- The Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI) which teamed up with Walter Willet in 1994 to jointly petition the US Food and Drug Administration to legislate trans fat labelling.
Meanwhile, here’s what my Singaporen friend living in Boulder, Colarado, has to say about trans fats in the US and about us in Singapore debating the issue:
“Can’t imagine people still dialoguing about it. Here, it is a straight no no.”
