- NYC and Transfats by SqueakyClean
18 y
3,249 4 Messages Shown
Blog: Observations
New York is getting serious about transfat in restaurants.
I don't live in New York, but I think it's a good move.
I posted this link in the News forum:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thecheckout/2006/09/nyc_to_restaurants_get_an_...
Here's the main article, but there are a lot of comments on the website.
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NYC to Restaurants: Get an Oil Change
by Annys Shin
In what could be a bellwether move, New York City's Board of Health yesterday took the first step in requiring restaurants to sharply limit the amount of trans fat in their foods.
Trans fat--a.k.a. partially hydrogenated vegetable oils--has been found to significantly increase the risk of heart disease. Public health advocates have likened it to bacon grease in your kitchen sink and lead in paint.
Americans eat, on average, six grams of trans fat a day. A single fast-food meal can contain as much as 10 grams--far higher than the American Heart Association recommended limit of about 2 grams per day
Under the suggested rule, NYC restaurants would have six months to switch cooking oils and shortenings and 18 months to limit trans fat to less than half a gram in the rest of their menu. Pre-packaged food in the original packaging would be exempt.
NYC wants to make mandatory a policy that city health officials have been asking restaurants to adopt voluntarily for the past year. Chains such as Wendy's have stopped using trans fat. Kraft Foods now sells trans fat-free Oreos. But NYC officials say most restaurants have ignored their pleas.
The Board of Health is also considering a requirement that restaurants list the calories in its food on menus and menu boards. The proposed rule would apply only to establishments that already publicly offer calorie information. In practice that means many of the large chains, including McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Such chains offer nutrition information on their Web sites. But who looks up the calories before heading out to Burger King? McDonald's is rolling out nutrition labels, including calorie info on its packaging. But Center for Science in the Public Interest's Margo Wootan says by then, you've already paid for your Big Mac, so that info is of less use than if you had to stare at it on the menu board. (A Big Mac has 560 calories in case you're wondering.)
The D.C. Council is contemplating a requirement that restaurants list calories on menus, too. I once saw the bill's chief sponsor, At-Large Council member Phil Mendelson, breathlessly tell an advisory neighborhood commission meeting that chili cheese fries contained a week's worth of calories, which, incidentally, only delayed my next visit to Ben's Chili Bowl by a month.
That leads me to the question: Even if you know how bad food is for you, will you stop eating it? Do you think a ban on trans fat is a good thing?
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SqueakyClean
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- addiction/cravings by Roooth
18 y
1,714
| It's hard to not eat bad food even knowing it's bad, I think that much is both obvious and sad. :-( It is hard I think because people get some amount of addiction and CRAVING for the food. I know I fight with this issue. Remeber the China visit (with the spitting/hocking)? While in China I craved sweets intensely, it was daily and did I mention INTENSE? The closest I coul get is orange Fanta soda, but their daily foods, sauces, breads, etc. don't hold sugar the way everything here does. Upon my return, I had ice cream which actually didn't taste so good to me and things were different. Unfortunately, it took maybe a week here for my sweet tooth to be restored.
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Roooth
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- sweets in asia by SqueakyClean
18 y
1,537
Wow, you are not kidding!
The chinese do not have our sweet tooth! (good for them)
It's hard to find a good dessert over there!
In Singapore, if we would make something like brownies, they would eat like 1 or 2 bites and say it was enough - "too rich." Ummmmm, hello? We can eat like half a pan! Chocolate can never be too rich! haha
And why would I ever bother with those vaguely sweet, light and airy cakes? I can hardly even taste them! I'm also not a big fan of a dessert that features, for example, purple yams. Sorry.
Oh, and it was almost impossible to find a good THICK milkshake. The kind you must eat with a spoon because it won't go through a straw. Mostly they would be all runny and thin, a milky drink. Yuck!
Also, they could be pretty stingy... my brother told me that at the Dairy Queen, which did serve their Blizzards upside down (to show they were that thick), they didn't put much of the candy in (like Oreos). You could barely see the cookies. One small spoonful, that was it. And if you tried to convince them to add more, they would try to charge you per spoonful! And my brother would be like, "But DQ is American! And that's not how they make them in America!!"
Not related to dessert, but there was this Subway that would only give 3 tiny olive rings per 6" sub! Whereas in America, they will put several fistfuls on, if you wish!
Now, in Singapore, plenty enough people had become acclimated to the western tastes (particularly those who have lived abroad), so you could find good, rich cakes and desserts. But I don't think China is quite as far along.
I think the Thais like sweeter desserts than most asians. But Indian desserts - yuck! I haven't been to Thailand or India, but as far as the restaurants I've eaten at, that was what I picked up.
Now, not liking sweet/rich desserts:
healthwise = good!
good taste = bad!
haha
Overall those are just little quibbles - I LOVED the food in Asia!!!!! Chinese food in China, yum! (for the most part). And Singapore had AMAZING food - local food and also a great selection of American food. It is a food heaven! (unless you like thick milkshakes. Tough.)
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SqueakyClean
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- p.s. by SqueakyClean
18 y
1,540
Asians like to serve fruit as a dessert. Particularly melons. Which is TERRIBLE food combining! I don't eat melons except on an empty stomach! So it would be a bummer when they would whip out the fruit at the end of the meal. I'd think, if only that had been around BEFORE the meal! And it can seem a little rude to not touch the fruit! Sometimes I'd nibble a little on the pineapple and papaya, if it seemed really ripe.
I told this lady who was always tired after lunch to stop eating fruit for dessert. She looked at me like I was crazy, but later she told me that it had helped a lot, and thanked me! yahoo!
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SqueakyClean
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