California Tiburon Restaurants Eliminate Artery-Clogging Oils
(CBS 5) New York is now the first big city to urge all of its restaurants to stop using trans fats in their dishes. But there’s a place in the Bay Area that has already cut the dangerous grease out of its food.
Tiburon has long been known for setting the housing price curve. But it’s now leading the movement to eliminate trans fats from commercial kitchens. Each of the town’s 18 restaurants has traded in their artery clogging oils.
At Sam’s, a Tiburon tradition for 85 years, the fryer is filled with trans fat free rice oil.
“If you look at all the other stuff, major commercial brands…they are all partially hydrogenated,” Sam’s co-owner Brian Wilson says. “It’s really unhealthy stuff to put in your body.”
It has been proven that trans fat or hydrogenated oils are bad for your heart. In Denmark, trans fats have been made illegal in public restaurants. Tiburon became the only city in America to voluntarily ban trans fats after rice oil purveyors convinced local businesses to make the switch.
"I think it’s probably a good thing,” local diner Haywood Bowser says. “We eat out enough around here, so I think we should have pretty good food…I think if you are going to feed the public, you might as well give them the good stuff.”
The rice oil doesn’t cost more money, and restaurateurs say it tastes the same.
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