PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia City Council is considering whether to ban trans fats in restaurants.

The ban was proposed by City Councilman Juan Ramos.

The head of the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, Dr. Michael Jacobson, was among those scheduled to testify at a hearing held Thursday.

Jacobson said that Philadelphia could take the lead on the issue. He said if Philadelphia banned trans fat, that would send a signal to other cities to do it, too. New York has already ordered a ban on trans fats.

In Philadelphia, the measure may change the way some fast foods are prepared with partially hydrogenated oil.

It was also unclear if the ruling would apply to take-out food like Philadelphia's legendary Tastykakes, which use some trans-fat oils.

Jacobson calls trans fat the single most harmful fat in the food supply. But he says restaurants are finding that substitutes are just as tasty and not much more expensive.

Last month, New York became the first city in the country to ban all restaurants from using artificial trans fats by mid-2008; similar measures are being discussed from Little Rock, Ark., to Los Angeles.

In Franklin County, Ohio, officials even suspended an annual contract to supply the county jail with doughnuts, citing concerns about trans fats.

Some food sellers stopped using trans fats voluntarily after the Food and Drug Administration required food labels to show trans-fat content. That includes coffeehouse giant Starbucks Corp., which recently announced it was halfway through a plan to purge trans fats from its U.S. food menu.

Others are still experimenting with changes to their carefully guarded recipes.

Dunkin' Donuts, a branch of privately held Dunkin' Brands Inc., says it has tested 22 alternative oils since starting its own push against trans fats in 2004.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. says it ``will continue to work aggressively with outside supply partners to develop a zero trans-fat doughnut.''

Food industry analyst Phil Lempert, editor of SupermarketGuru.com, says food companies will likely fast-track efforts to remove trans fats as similar laws crop up elsewhere.

The big question for food makers, he said, is how consumers will react.

Consumers shouldn't assume, however, that a trans-fat-free doughnut is necessarily healthy, said Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University.

``My feeling is that the whole trans fat issue is a calorie distraction,'' Nestle said. ``You think that because it's trans-fat-free, it doesn't have any calories. And whatever the substitute is going to be, it's going to have just as many calories."

For More Information

www.bantransfats.com
www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4776
Foods With Trans Fat Restaurants That Banned Trans Fat