Safer Fats for Healthier Hearts: The Case for Eliminating Dietary Artificial Trans Fat Intake

successful effort to voluntarily eliminate trans fatty acids from the cooking oils used in its 18 local restaurants (1). Since then, many city and state governments across the United States are following suit, and they are struggling with the controversies inherent in defining their role in reducing the fat content of foods prepared and served in their communities. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s trans fat restriction program (described by Angell and colleagues in this issue [2]) pro-vides a powerful demonstration that commercial, social, and political barriers to regulating fats used for food prep-aration in restaurants and similar venues can be overcome, albeit not voluntarily, even in a sprawling metropolis with diverse stakeholders and contentious interest groups. This successful intervention creates a very visible precedent tha