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Monica N. Padilla
Professor Porter
English 101.5580
May 28, 2008
New York City Bans Trans Fat
According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, more than 12.5 million Americans have Coronary Heart Disease, and more than 500,000 die each year. That results to making CHD one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Scientific research reveals that consumption of foods containing trans fat increases bad (Low Density Lipoprotein) cholesterol and at the same time lowers good (High Density Lipoprotein) cholesterol - a combination which increases the risk of lethal heart diseases forcing New York City to ban trans fat.
The official website of Department of Health launched a press release on December 5, 2006 stating that “the New York City Board of Health voted unanimously to make New York City even healthier by requiring that all city restaurants remove artificial trans fats [by July 2008].”
What is trans fat? It is the most dangerous type of dietary fat and it is known to raise the risk of heart disease. Foods that contain artificial trans fat include margarines, shortenings, fry oils and as well as many baked goods, mixes and packaged foods. While some trans fats occur naturally, most are artificial. The regulation only addresses artificial trans fat. Artificial trans fat is manufactured chemically, when vegetable oil is put through a process called hydrogenation (Hobbs 9). In this process, hydrogen gas is bubbled through liquid vegetable oil, causing a change in the chemical configuration of the oil and making it thicker in
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consistency. The food industry began widely adopting the use of partially hydrogenated oil due to its cost (Hobbs 12). It costs less than butter and lard and better still, hydrogenated oils increased the shelf life of foods because they went rancid much more slowly than butter and lard, therefore greater economic profitability....