Flip a coin.
If you ate out in Baltimore recently, your chances are about even that the restaurant owner does not even know whether they use dangerous trans fats in their menu.
“When you buy food in the store there?s a little label that tells you whether there?s trans fat in there. But when you go to a restaurant you don?t have that,” said health commissioner Dr. Josh Sharfstein. “About half of the restaurant owners in Baltimore don?t know about trans fats or have a trans fat policy.”
Trans fats are artificial oils created by adding hydrogen to vegetable oil. The process compounds LDL “bad” cholesterol ? responsible for clogging and damaging arteries and the heart ? and eliminates HDL “good” cholesterol, according to the health department. Trans fats account for 70,000 to 200,000 heart disease deaths in the United States each year, according to studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
All city health inspectors will ask questions about trans fats and offer educational materials every time they inspect a kitchen, Sharfstein said, in efforts to turn the tide of trans fats in Charm City.
He said he wanted to give education a chance before considering regulation, and announced the campaign at Phillips Seafood Restaurant in the Inner Harbor with representatives of Phillips and Hamden?s Cafe Hon standing by.
“We do fry a bit of stuff,” said Bill Irvin, director of operations for Phillips. “We actually did blind testing. We tried five different oils versus our own oil.”
The results? Phillips changed from a trans fat oil to soy.
“This oil we have blows the trans fat away in terms of flavor,” Irvin said.
While the soy oil costs marginally more, he said it lasts longer before the fryer has to be dumped and refilled. “We?re going to make that back eventually, in time we don?t have to spend switching out the oil.”
