Winnipeg isn't following Calgary's lead in ordering restaurants to go trans fat-free, but the city's Salisbury House restaurant chain is heading in that direction anyway.
"If we can make this happen, why not?" said the company's president and CEO Earl Barish. "It's a positive thing from a health perspective," he said. All the deep fryers have been switched to trans fat-free oils, Barish said. In the next week or so, they are introducing sweet potato fries, he said
Salisbiry House is also working at changing the ingredients for their baked goods to make them trans fat-free as well, Barish said.
"Our commissary is currently bringing in samples of newer products available that hopefully will allow us to be totally transfat-free," he said.
Effective Jan. 1, Calgary City Hall forbade restaurants in the city from cooking with fats and oils that contained more than two per cent trans fats.
Partially hydrogenated trans fats, so-called 'bad' fats because they help increase 'bad' cholesterol levels and are linked to obesity and heart disease, occur naturally in milk and some other foods. Most trans fats however, are created artificially by hydrogenating unsaturated fats to make them more suitable for baking and to extend their shelf life.
Calgary was the first Canadian city to almost completely exclude trans fats in restaurants. In 2006, New York became the first major United States city to ban trans fats from restaurant food. Philadelphia followed with its own measures in 2007.
A spokeswoman for Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz said a ban of trans fats from restaurant food isn't planned.
"The priorities of Winnipeggers have been to reduce crime, improve roads and infrastructure," the spokeswoman said. "That's what (city) council and the mayor have been focused on."
And yet, the silence of authorities doesn't mean establishments have avoided cutting down on trans fats, said a spokesman for a restaurant lobby group. Customer demand, more than legislation, dictates restaurant practices in the competitive food industry, said Scott Jocelyn, executive director of the 350-member Manitoba Restaurant and Food Services Association.
"There just seems to me like there are more and more (trans fat free restaurants) every day," Jocelyn said. "I'm coming in to work today and I hear an ad about a restaurant that's advertising that they've gone trans fat free, without it being legislated. So obviously, there are some people thinking that this is the way to go. ... This is where we're headed. But I think the big thing for us is that these restaurants are coming to this decision on their own, without it being legislated."
In fact, a federal government initiative last year found restaurants across the country were taking steps on their own to remove trans fats from their menus before Ottawa could order them to comply, Jocelyn added.
"It kind of sounds to me like Calgary's jumped the gun, as opposed to waiting to see what would happen without it being legislated," he said.
He couldn't say how many restaurants in Manitoba have gone trans fat free.
joe.paraskevas@freepress.mb.ca
carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
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