Westchester County health officials this month implemented a ban on trans fat cooking oils in food service establishments that they estimate could reduce deaths from heart disease in the county by as many as 100 each year. The ban was opposed by a state restaurant trade group chapter here, many of whose members are said to have voluntarily eliminated trans fats from their kitchens and menu items.
According to the American Heart Association, dietary trans fatty acids, or trans fats, raise total blood cholesterol levels and “bad” cholesterol while lowering “good” cholesterol levels, thus raising the risk of coronary heart disease that can lead to heart attack or stroke.
Bypassing the longer legislative process of the county Board of Legislators, the ban was approved in December by the county Board of Health as an amendment to the county sanitary code. It will be enforced by county health inspectors as part of their periodic inspections of the county”™s approximately 3,000 licensed food service businesses, said Dr. Joshua Lipsman, county health commissioner. Included among those businesses are bakeries, restaurants and diners, school and industrial cafeterias and corporate-park cafes.
Initially, violators will not be fined as long as they switch oils. After a 90-day grace period ends on April 8, businesses failing to comply will be cited and could pay fines for the health code violation.
Lipsman pointed out the law only applies to cooking oils containing trans fat. Other trans fat sources, such as margarine and vegetable shortening, do not fall under the ban. And the prohibition only applies to food prepared within Westchester, he noted. A local bakery, for example, whose doughnuts and pastries are supplied by an industrial kitchen in New Jersey would be exempt, as would a restaurant serving potato chips commercially made outside the county.
Lipsman said the board of health approved the ban after hearing testimony in November “on the scientific evidence of a clear association between dietary trans-fat and coronary heart disease.” Supporters of the ban included nutritional experts Meir Stampfer of the Harvard School of Public Health, Walter C. Willett of Harvard Medical School and Dr. Michael F. Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“You could save many lives at virtually no cost to citizens and the county and only a temporary modest cost and inconvenience to the restaurants,” Jacobson testified.
Richard Stytzer, president of the 200-member Westchester-Rockland chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association, said his group opposed the ban at the health board hearing. Stytzer said restaurateurs felt their voluntary participation in the county”™s year-old BeFit Restaurant program, in which restaurants not using trans fat in cooking were listed on a county Web site, “was enough” to address the health problem.
 The restaurant group favors education on the dangers of trans fats rather than legislation, he said. As part of that effort, the group plans to distribute CDs from the Carnegie Institute to inform members on the subject, he said.
Through the county”™s voluntary program, “People were already switching over to begin with,” said Stytzer, vice president of Antun”™s of Westchester, an Elmsford catering firm that has stopped using trans fat oils for deep frying and sautés. “People are accepting small increases in costs or they”™re paying the same amount” for cooking supplies since switching to non-trans fat oils, he said.
Both he and Lipsman said more than 700 establishments had joined the Be Fit program when the ban was adopted. But the commissioner said only 40 percent to 50 percent of participants changed their kitchen practices and gave up trans fat when they joined the initiative; the rest already did not use trans fat oils.
 Last July, health officials surveyed about 300, or 10 percent, of Westchester”™s licensed food servers. Based on that survey, they estimated about 500 establishments, or one out of six, were still using trans fat oils. Among types of licensed establishments, those users were “across the board,” Lipsman said.
 “We didn”™t think that many of the remaining 500 or so still using trans fat oils were going to give them up voluntarily,” he said. “For one reason or another, we didn”™t think our voluntary incentive was ever going to be enough to overcome the inertia” in a business “of using its trans fat oils.”
Westchester County”™s ban followed a similar one in New York City, where the use of trans fats in cooking “went out without even a whimper,” Lipsman said. But Stytzer said the restaurant group was concerned that if those prohibitions were applied nationwide, supplies of non-trans fat oils might be inadequate for the market. The bans also have spurred development of new alternative cooking oils, he noted. Â
“Hopefully by doing a trans fat ban we don”™t create worse oils with worse negative health effects 10 years from now,” Stytzer said.
“The bottom line,” said Lipsman, “is that we estimate that 50 to 100 fewer people will die in each year as a result of this ban. That”™s the bottom line.”
The health commissioner said a law that would require chain restaurants with standardized menus to post prominently calorie counts on menus and menu boards is expected to be reintroduced in the county Board of Legislators this year. That proposed law, too, was opposed by the New York State Restaurant Association, which last fall mounted a successful legal challenge to a similar law adopted last year in New York City. The ruling judge, however, while deciding against the city on technical grounds, said the city did have authority to impose a calorie-count mandate. New York City health officials are expected to come back with a revised draft of the menu labeling law.
Stytzer said the mandatory menu labeling would be costly for restaurants. “Where is the legislation going to stop?” he said. “People should have their own choices in what they want. If I don”™t post my calories, people are not going to come in ”“ and I”™m out of business.”     Â
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