They now want to ban all restaurants from using oil with trans fat because it’s so dangerous to your health.

Some restaurants say no, it will change the price of the oil they buy from $10 to $35 and they can’t afford it. Sports bars will be hit hardest as all their appetizers appear to be fried.

I’m waffling on this. When I buy food products for my house, I’m careful what I buy. When I eat out, I try to be careful, but you don’t know how much salt they use or what types of oil.


I’d rather have labeling for each item (yeah, right, like that would happen) instead of a broad ban on trans fat. Who is going to police it? I have gone to restaurants that were so dirty I walked out. I went into on last week to get some salad dressing to go (I like it that much) and stood and watched them in the kitchen, including watching the kid wipe his nose and then stick his hands in a tub of sirloin chunks while he threaded them on a skewer. Where is the food police now??

The health departments can’t do inspections as they should, can’t keep up with all the new restaurants, and now they will have to go from restaurant to restaurant and ask to check the oil?

Give me a break.

City mulls ban on trans fat

By Stephen Smith, GLOBE STAFF

Boston health regulators could decide as early as February whether to ban trans fats in restaurants, the city’s top health official said Tuesday night.

After hearing from New York health authorities about that city’s recently adopted trans fat prohibition, John Auerbach, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, said his agency would continue reviewing the feasibility of a comparable ban.

“It’s a challenging issue,” Auerbach said. “I wouldn’t want a regulation that couldn’t be enforced in Boston.”

David Mulligan, a former state public health commissioner who is now chairman of the board overseeing the city health commission, described Boston as “just sort of at the beginning of the process. I can just hear cries that we’re becoming the food police and that we’re infringing on rights,” Mulligan said.

New York earlier this month became the first major city to ban virtually all trans fat from meals cooked by restaurants.

Usually artificial, trans fats have been linked to increases in the bad form of cholesterol and, by extension, to heart disease. The fat is commonly used in commercially produced cakes, cookies, pies, margarine, and fried foods. Typically, it is used to extend shelf life.

Studies show that during the past four decades, Americans have spent an increasing share of their food dollars dining outside the home. At the same time, their girth has expanded dramatically.

The combination of those two trends has led public-health specialists to consider whether they can battle the obesity epidemic by regulating restaurants. That has made trans fat an obvious target.