Brookline considers trans fat ban
Town could lead way for statewide prohibition on oil
In the latest effort to squeeze cholesterol-boosting trans fats off the menu, Brookline will consider banning the nutritional villain from restaurants and schools.
If the measure passes at a May 29 town meeting, Brookline would be the first Bay State municipality to ban trans fats. Its 200 restaurants would have a year and a half to stop using trans fats for frying and two years to stop using them in baked goods. Packaged foods, which now list trans fats content on labels, would not be affected. The town intends to enforce the ban through regular kitchen inspections, said Alan Balsam, director of Public Health and Human Services.
Trans fats, artifically made oils, are used in frying and are found in salad dressings and margarine, cakes, cookies, and pies. While they are prized for extending product shelf life, trans fats have no redeeming value, nutritionists say. Research has shown that trans fats raise bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol, which contributes to heart disease.
New York City became the first municipality to prohibit the use of such fats in restaurants with a ban that takes effect in July. Massachusetts is also weighing a ban, with a bill being considered by the Legislature's Joint Committee on Public Health at a hearing in July.
State Representative Peter J. Koutoujian, the measure's sponsor and the committee cochairman, said he was inspired by the ban in New York, where inspectors have 20,000 restaurants to oversee, compared with 13,000 in Massachusetts.
"Many of the chains in Massachusetts would go trans fat-free in New York. Why should the people from Massachusetts not also benefit while New York was benefiting?" he asked. "And because New York is such a large user of cooking oils, when they started going trans fat-free, the production of trans fat-free oils would increase and cost would decrease."
Boston and Cambridge have pursued bans on trans fats, but have not yet acted. In Boston, the effort was halted after the public health commissioner left. The Cambridge Public Health Department decided that enforcement would to be too difficult and that it would first work with restaurants to encourage voluntary phase-out .
In recent years, Brookline has gained a reputation for being the region's putative Big Brother.
In 2005, Town Meeting members banned spanking. In 1993, they were the first in Massachusetts to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, a policy that was later adopted statewide. And at the same May 29 meeting at which they take on trans fats, officials will consider raising taxes on sport utility vehicles.
"In this day and age, they don't want trans fats; they don't want smoking; they don't want anything negative," said Alan Kaplan, owner of the Village Smokehouse in Brookline Village. His menu features stuffed jalapeno peppers, french fries, barbecue, and even a jalapeno-topped "death burger." Kaplan said a recent check of his kitchen determined that his chef was not using trans fats.
"From a business standpoint, I have nothing to worry about, because we've never used them here," Kaplan said. "If I had known it was a big deal, I would have been advertising it. But nobody ever knew anything about this before."
Restaurants every where see the writing on the wall, but finding frying substitutes that do not alter trademark tastes can be a time-consuming or costly endeavor. Dunkin' Donuts, trying to prepare for the New York ban, has been searching for a suitable substitute for trans fats in its donuts since 2004. KFC, which is facing a lawsuit from the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, just phased out partially hydrogenated oils at its 5,500 restaurants after two years of research and taste tests.
The Massachusetts Restaurant Association could not be reached last night. Chief executive Peter G. Christie has said that restaurants would need time to make the conversion and do not like the idea of a patchwork of community bans.
(Correction: Because of an editing error, a story in Saturday's City & Region section about a proposal to ban the use of trans fats in Brookline restaurants and schools incorrectly stated that the Center for Science in the Public Interest is currently suing KFC over its use of oils with trans fat. CSPI dropped the lawsuit in October after the company announced plans to switch to trans-fat-free oils.)
