Just to get a specific example, let’s talk about French Fries. How much cheaper is it for restaurants to use the trans fats in their oil than to use a healthier substitute?
This is a highly controversial subject. And it probably varies greatly among individual situations.
However, the official NYC site about their trans fat ban denies that there will be any extra costs:
I think a lot of trans-fat things just taste better compared to comparable products with unsaturated fats only.
Uh, I do believe you’re thinking of something else-you can get plenty of saturated fats that aren’t trans-fat.
ETA: Actually, they’re unsaturated. So never mind. But it doesn’t look like they’re there for taste.
Trans fats do not taste any better, they are an unnatural byproduct of the hydrogenation process. It seems to me the best method to remove trans-fats would be to continue the hydrogenation process until even the trans-fats are hydrogenated. That would be more expensive to do.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard the biggest concern is in baked goods where solid fats are required to give the right texture to pastries. Restaurants are faced with either using trans fats which are unhealthy or saturated animal fats like butter which then makes the food non-vegan.
I think people are misinterpreting what I said. The reason we hydrogenate things is taste and texture. The way I see it, if simplified to a single concept:
You can make something with lard, hydrogenated oil, or normal vegetable oil. Lard is considered unhealthy, but probably tastes the best. Oil is considered healthiest, and is probably cheapest, but is difficult (but not impossible) to use because it is liquid making a lot of things have the wrong texture or taste. Hydrogenation seemingly gave people the best of both worlds - a solid, vegetable fat.
What I was referring to is that if you just substitute liquid oil for hydrogenated solid vegetable fat, the same product would probably be cheaper to make and would taste considerably worse (or have entirely incorrect texture). If you substitute lard, it’ll most likely be more expensive, and taste better, but less people would buy it. This is just a guess on my part though.
Based on the research I’ve read, I’ll eat lard any day before trans-fats. Trans-fats are really bad. Your body is not made to deal with them.
I’ll give you this. You cannot substitute hydrogenated vegatable oil for just plain vegetable oil. They are simply not interchangable.
Of couse lard does not have the shelf life of hydrogenated vegetable oil, so there’s another expense these resteraunts don’t want to pay.
My grandmother bakes with lard. To my Completely Modernized And Westernized mouth, her cookies taste a little off.
But her soap is really cool!