NYC Health Dept. Says: 'Skip the Trans Fats Please'
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 08.16.05
From the City-issed press release of today: NEW YORK CITY – August 10, 2005 – "The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) today asked City restaurateurs and food suppliers to voluntarily make an oil change by eliminating partially hydrogenated vegetable oils from the kitchen. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils have been chemically modified and contain relatively high levels of trans fat, which significantly increases risk of heart disease, the City’s top cause of death". TreeHugger recommends reading the full press release at the above link. Check below the fold for some cookery design connections.
Advice for those who want to make the kitchen trans-ition. Get at least three beautiful oil bottles: one for each of grade of cooking oil. Use your creating talents to mix colors, shapes, and spouts to recycle old bottles, similar to this idea. Good to have several bottle sizes to choose from, so volume matches your consumption rate.
Use the no drip spouts if you can find them.
If your cooking area is in the sun. dark glass is needed to preserve flavor. If not too bright, clear glass helps identify "which is which" (labels are tacky).
In one, put rapeseed (canola), or perhaps sunflower, or other bland tasting oils that you might use for frying eggs, for example. In another, put a light, inexpensive olive oil suitable for dressing steamed veggies or frying fish, for example. In a third bottle, put your extra virgin, unfiltered, great for fantastic salads, olive oil.
Tin oil cans with the elegant side spouts look nice in the store, but they very expensive and quickly get gummed and corroded.
Keep a small funnel nearby to make refilling easy.
...or use your new no-drip spout to refill the bottle.
And I'd add a 4th bottle for sesame oil. Stir frying with olive or canola just isn't the same.
I love these spouts. They're equally good for oils, vinegars, liquors, and pretty much anything else. Many are cork and metal, but even the plastic ones get reused, so it's not all bad. And the cork ones (as well as *most* of the plastic ones) have varying widths so each spout can be used in most bottles.
On the subject of trans fats, see also Crisco (or any other solid oils) and Margerine. When looking for trans-fat-free foods, be careful of Palm Oil. It's arguably almost as bad.
Canola oil also have trans-fats, due to the high heat used in the refining process. And hexane residue :-) Oh, not to mention that it's nearly impossible to find non-GMO canola. Stay away from this oil--it's worthless.
Similarly, don't use any olive oil that's not at least virgin. Anything other than virgin & extra virgin has been refined.
Where are these bottles from? I've been looking for somthing similar for a long time - they are beautiful! Any help would be appreciated...thanks...
====author's response===
Lost track of the link. Would have been good to have included a link in case they were for sale. Got there in the first place by starting with a web search on "oil bottles". Seemed to me the site had something to do with botanical extracts and herbs if that helps.