The spin-driven restaurant and beverage industry front group, the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), has created a grass roots compilation of city, county and state efforts to ban added trans fats in restaurant food. From Boston's Health Commissioner to Cleveland's City Council to Washington State's Board of Health, various government agencies nationwide are sponsoring ordinances, regulations and laws to forbid partially hydrogenated oils. "We know that trans fat consumption leads to serious health problems and we believe that it's government's role...to do what we can to encourage people to consume healthy food," CCF's "Daily Headlines" quotes Boston Public Health Commission executive director John Auerbach. CCF also notes budding Chicago action and quotes Alderman Edward Burke--once famous for stalling progressive ordinance proposals under the late Mayor Harold Washington--calling trans fats "cruelty to human beings." CCF calls New York City's landmark December 2006 ban "outrageous" and derides all the anti-trans fat lawmakers as "having nothing better to do."

Bucking intense restaurant industry opposition, New York City has banned all added trans fats in restaurant food. The ban was passed by the city's Board of Health on December 6, 2006, and takes effect in July 2007. Donut makers get a one-year reprieve in order to find a substitute oil for the deep-fried dough. The board's action also included a requirement that restaurant chains post nutritional information. "We're not trying to take away anybody's ability to go out and have the kind of food they want in the quantities they want," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He said that health department estimates show that the ban on hydrogenated oils could save hundreds of lives annually. Dan Fleshler, spokesman for the National Restaurant Association responded, "We're deeply disappointed. We would prefer to do this voluntarily. Restaurants have been moving on their own in response to customer demand and eliminating trans fats." The Center for Consumer Freedom, a national front group for the restaurant and beverage industry, had vigorously fought the ban and immediately issued a statement headlined "Are Calories Next?", calling the ban "unprecedented in its paternalistic scope."

When PR Watch most recently caught a cell phone signal from Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and the new Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food, Schlosser was rushing from car to car in New York City, after London, which was just after Berkeley, where he was giving students a preview of the indie film version of "Fast Food Nation." We didn’t have the chance to ask him when he had time to eat. But we did use the time to speak with him about fast food, the U.S. childhood obesity epidemic, and the public relations industry’s techniques in attacking his work. Schlosser has been likened to a latter day Upton Sinclair—exposing the abattoirs and abuses in the meatpacking and calorie-packing processed food industry. If you haven’t read his books, you should, and here are a few reasons why you can’t just see the movie.