Trimming the trans fat

BROOKLINE -- So you are the owner of a restaurant whose very existence celebrates a life well-lived, and well-fed, with iconic paintings of corpulent figures festooning the walls, and potato pancakes filling the plates. And now your town has voted to ban a whole category of fat.

What do you do?

If you are Bob Shuman , who opened Zaftigs Delicatessen in Coolidge Corner a decade ago, you act before the town does.

Weeks ahead of the May 31 Town Meeting that adopted the state's first prohibition on artificial trans fats, Shuman saw the writing on the menu and drained trans-fat oil from his Frialator , replacing it with a healthier brew of canola, grape seed, and safflower oils. The switch costs him $400 extra a month, he said.

"I'm not sure I'm totally sold on the town taking the position it has," Shuman said. "Let there be world peace and then we can make decisions about ingesting trans-fat oil."

Nowhere is there more chatter about the trans-fat ban and its consequences than along a bustling swath of Harvard Street in the heart of Coolidge Corner. Pizza makers and bagel bakers, crepe chefs and sports-bar owners are scouring their kitchens for evidence of the bad boy of the fat world.

"I checked off on my Nutella. No trans fat there. Caramel, no trans fat there," said Nick Mallia, general manager of Paris Creperie. "We got off pretty lucky."

For certain joints, especially those that do not offer menus laden with fried foods and baked goods, little will change when the ban begins in November 2008.

For other restaurants, those that tempt diners with onion rings and chicken wings, the prohibition will cause chefs to look for alternative recipes for signature fare. Even if the cuisine is not haute, it must be legal.

In a nation bedeviled by twin epidemics of obesity and diabetes, trans fats have emerged as public enemy number one for specialists struggling to clear clogged arteries. They are more dangerous to human health than any other kind of fat, said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a Harvard School of Public Health cardiologist and epidemiologist.

Trans fats raise the bad kind of cholesterol and lower the good kind. "No other type of fat does that," Mozaffarian said. And evidence suggests they are linked to diabe tes and weight gain around the belly.

While trans fats occur naturally in some food, most are produced industrially and can be found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Artificial trans fat lets doughnuts, cookies, and other baked goods stay on shelves longer, and gives croissants their flaky texture. Trans-fat cooking oils also tend to be cheaper and last longer than other options.

The battle over trans fats has echoes in the campaign to banish smoking from bars and restaurants. Brookline led that charge, too, becoming the first Bay State town to prohibit use of tobacco in all workplaces.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that in Brookline -- land of Kennedy and Dukakis -- a barside philosopher can wax existential about a trans-fat ban, even as she tucks into a cheese-swaddled sausage roll and fries.

"Freedom around eating is a basic human right, but I also recognize there's an obesity epidemic," said Jennifer Maylone , a social worker from Roslindale who found herself one recent Friday at the Coolidge Corner Clubhouse , surrounded by more than a score of TV screens displaying the ups and downs of baseball teams and the stock market. "I don't think it's a black-and-white issue. "

With trans fats, you are only hurting yourself, Maylone said. With smoking, "you directly affect other people."

The prohibition calls for eliminating artificial trans fat from more than 200 restaurants and other purveyors of freshly made food, including schools and nursing homes.

Consumers could still get their trans-fat fix in packaged products branded with nutrition labels.

The trans-fat revolt gained prominence last year, when New York became the first major city to adopt a ban, followed by Philadelphia. Cambridge is also weighing a ban.

"We're not the food police," said Brookline's health commissioner, Alan Balsam . "This is about giving people healthier food items. If you can take trans fat out, why not take it out?"

It will be the job of Mike Gannon , general manager of the Coolidge Corner Clubhouse , and his cooks to figure out how they can make their fried delicacies without trans fat. He is also concerned about his restaurant's mud pie, made with an Oreo cookie crust.

"I'm confident we'll be able to find something that keeps our food tasting the way that it does now," Gannon said. "But people are telling us way too much lately what we can and can't do. If people come in here, they come in for a reason -- burgers, nachos, wings."

Just a few storefronts away, at Bottega Fiorentina , white chalk on a green board states: "WE NEVER USED TRANS FAT OIL."

Cristina Ferrini , the owner, emigrated from Italy. Trans fat, she said, "wasn't part of our life growing up." So, when she decided to open a restaurant that promises the "best sandwiches outside of Florence," trans fat would not be part of her business.

With big cities showing an appetite for trans-fat bans, chains such as Starbucks , Peet's Coffee & Tea, and Finagle A Bagel , all of which have shops in Coolidge Corner, have demanded trans fat-free pastries from suppliers. Finagle owner (and Brookline resident) Laura Trust acknowledged that suppliers might charge more if they have to substitute animal fat -- butter or lard -- for industrially produced trans fat.

"If it costs a little more," Trust said, "so it costs a little more, if it's in the name of good health."

It also might be in the name of good business. Brookline's health department and some restaurants are considering a marketing campaign touting the town as a trans fat-free haven, reminiscent of "smoke-free Brookline" promotions from the mid-1990s.

"Now that we got rid of the trans fat," Zaftigs sous chef Fabio Rocha said, "people won't feel guilty about eating the French fries."

Stephen Smith can be reached at stsmith@globe.com.