Restaurants slow to drop trans fat options

French fries pose a challenge
Fries present one of the toughest challenges. They usually arrive at restaurants blanched, or precooked, in oil with trans fats. So even if a restaurant has switched to a healthier oil, french fries can still have trans fat. But manufacturers are starting to offer trans fat-free fries.

The Ruby Tuesday’s chain is asking its suppliers to remove trans fat and has switched from hydrogenated soybean oil to trans fat-free canola in its more than 700 restaurants, spokesman Perrin Anderson said.

Making the switch is not cheap. Yet it is not terribly expensive, either, said Kelly Brintle, senior vice president at food service supplier Ventura Foods of Brea, Calif., which sells a trans-fat free oil.

The switch probably adds a penny to the cost of an individual order of french fries, Brintle said.

“It’s a matter of us getting the operator out of the mentality of expecting always just the lowest cost,” he said.

Some believe the government did not go far enough on trans fat in the dietary guidelines made public last month.

The Washington-based Center for Science and the Public Interest has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to require restaurants to disclose their use of trans fat.

AP

'Don’t order deep-fried foods'
Doctors and scientists who developed the recommendations for the dietary guidelines set a specific trans fat limit: People should consume 1 percent or less of their calorie intake.

But when the Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments issued the guidelines, they changed that to keeping consumption “as low as possible.”

“I think their feeling probably was that it would be hard to do it right away. They want trans fat to be dropped, but they want to give food companies, particularly baked goods companies, time to switch this around, get the level down below 1 percent,” said Dr. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, a members of the guidelines panel who directs obesity research at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York.

Until restaurants eliminate trans fat from their food, another doctor on the panel offered these suggestions: “Don’t order deep-fried foods. Order things like broiled fish, chicken breast, lean red meat,” said Dr. Penny Kris-Etherton, a nutritionist.

That’s a tall order considering the public’s tastes.

The fastest-growing restaurant food last year, according to Harry Balzer of the consumer research firm NPD Group, was fried chicken.

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