FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
October 30, 2006
Trans Fat Freedom
Yum Brands, Inc. announced this morning that its 5,500 U.S. KFC stores will replace partially hydrogenated vegetable oil in most menu items (it hasn’t found a good alternative for biscuits) with soybean oil by April 2007. That means cutting out most trans fat, a big step for a big industry. (Yum had revenue of more than $9 billion in the last year.)
Yum said its other properties, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s, and A&W, are also looking into eliminating trans fats. Wendy’s already went trans-fat free, and McDonald’s is continuing to “test in earnest” for alternatives. Fast food may be the final frontier of trans fat, which contributes to coronary heart disease and which Harvard researchers estimate causes 30,000 U.S. deaths a year.
Starting January 1, 2006, the FDA required trans fat content to be listed on nutritional labels. And today, New York City’s Board of Health is holding a hearing to decide if it should be the first city to ban trans fat in its restaurants.
Posted by Josie Swindler at October 30, 2006 3:17 PM | Category: news + current events |
5 Comments
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Exactly what kind a of 'price' do you put on your health? I can understand that choices are limited if one is poor, but if you're not you have a choice as to what you put in your body and thus your longterm health.
'Healthy' fast food is still, for the most part, not good for you. And organic food is competing against giant companies that can leverage economies of scale.
Actually, New York would not be the first city to ban trans fats: the city of Tiburon, in California has been trans fat free since early 2005, and I believe Santa Cruz has done the same recently.
Wow, we make mad amount of various types of vegetable oils in this country, can't we just cut the Crisco already? Can we not let the fatty lazos greedy corp CEO dictator types win this one? I mean, really. The people who this affect won't change because their wallet thinks for them. And they are likely to resist change. We must break the spiral for our fellow citizens, Yes, must let them know what hit them. A whiff of common sense. Common sense is the child of Democracy and Informed consent.
Losing the Crisco is a start, but corp. coffers self-reining is like educating 'lard butts' not to down another 'dollar value meal.' And "balancing intake w/exercise" as the junk food giants purport is a sham too, for socioeconomic access/affordability is a key triggerpoint.
Do you really see poor people that use convenience stores as corner grocers and fast food as their staple bopping onto a bus in search of a farmer's market or a Safeway? Not gonna happen, even with 'do or die' threats to their own health.
Kids snarfing this toxic crud w/early onset diseases ensure our health care system will groan under the strain of this additional weight long term too. Soon the spring from our economic scale will go 'boing' w/health care costs; we're already getting there.
Great way to bankrupt the country. Death by junk food. Policy needs to enter the picture this round, as environments create behavior MUCH more than behavior creates environment. (keeping apace w/'market demand' for fast food in poor communities is not just amoral, it's immoral) Just blogged about this w/stats & studies permalinked at: http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=126
Just change the oil-good start-all this talk is good for educating people on the dangers of trans fats. Plus, watch out what you buy in grocery stores. there are many great choices now-better cookies, chips, crackers etc-are these healthy-of couse not. At least the new choices are getting better and many companies have eliminated the use of trans fats.