If you don't have the willpower to pass up that trans fat-filled doughnut, official legislation may soon make it easier.
With many cities south of the border at various stages of introducing bans on trans fats, Calgary has become the first city in Canada seeking to ban the artery-clogging hydrogenated fats.
The Calgary Health Region is looking for guidance from New York City's Board of Health, since New York will be the first major U.S. city to place a ban on all trans-fats in restaurants by 2008.
"The federal government… has been working with industry over the past few years to put a position paper in place to look at banning trans fat nationally by 2010. What the Calgary Health Region is looking to do is speed up that process locally," says James Finstad, communications officer with the Calgary Health Region.
Trans fats have been a favourite in the restaurant and fast food industry because they have a longer shelf life than other oils, can be used longer in deep-fryers, and produce tastier pastries and baked goods.
Following New York's lead, Los Angeles city officials recently unveiled a plan to phase out trans fat in restaurants over the next 18 months. Fast food chains such as KFC, Taco Bell and Macdonalds are eliminating trans fat from some foods, and Wendys banned it outright last August.
What makes trans fats unhealthy is hydrogenation, a process that renders oils solid at room temperature. Once these fats enter the blood system, they can cause higher cholesterol levels. High cholesterol levels have been linked to heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, as well as other illnesses.
Charmaine Kuran, a program officer with the Consumer Protection Division at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, says the nutritional facts panel on most prepackaged foods that was introduced in 2003 has to declare the amount of trans fat in the product.
"This is to help Canadians make more informed choices about what they are eating, and if people have issues that require dietary management that they are able to choose between different types of food based on their dietary requirements," says Kuran.
Despite this, Health Canada reports that although people have decreased the amount of overall fat intake over the past 20 years, as of the end of 1990s Canadians' intake of trans fats was amongst the highest in the world.
In response to a bill introduced by the NDP over two years ago, the House of Commons put together a joint task force with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and Health Canada in 2005. The goal of the task force was to come up with ways ""to effectively eliminate or reduce processed1 trans fats in Canadian foods to the lowest level possible."
In their report, the task force found that producers of bread products, salad dressings, french fries and snack foods have made an effort to eliminate or reduce trans fats in their products. However, baked goods, oriental noodles and hard margarines still contain high levels of the hydrogenated fats.
The report recommends that any vegetable oil or soft margarine sold to the customer or used in products should only have 2 percent of its total fat content be trans fat. All other products can have 5 percent. The task force believes this will effectively cut trans fat intake by Canadians down to 55 percent or more.
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