Taco Bell Corp., the biggest seller of Mexican fast food, will start using oil without harmful trans fats in all of its more than 4,200 U.S. restaurants by April as public pressure to change to healthier oil mounts.
Taco Bell has already switched to canola oil that doesn’t have trans fats in more than 100 restaurants, the Irvine, California-based chain said in a statement today. Taco Bell is a unit of Yum Brands Inc., which also owns the KFC and Pizza Hut chains.
The move comes almost three weeks after sister chain KFC Corp. said it would eliminate trans fat in its cooking oil at its 5,500 U.S. restaurants by April. New York, Chicago and other cities are considering regulations to cut trans fats in restaurants to lower the risk of heart disease.
More than 15 menu items at Taco Bell will contain zero grams of trans fat, including the beef crunchy taco, the chalupa supreme and the spicy chicken taco, the chain said.
The trans fat-free canola oil is being supplied by Bunge Oil. Dow Chemical Co. developed the oil.
Competitor Wendy’s International Inc. became the first major fast-food chain to stop using the harmful fats when it switched its oil in August. Burger King Holdings Inc. also announced last month it will begin testing trans fat-free oil in the next three months.
Shares Up Shares of Yum rose 13 cents to $62.26 at 11:22 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock had gained 33 percent this year before today.
At Taco Bell locations where there are also KFC restaurants, the combined stores will switch to the trans fat- free oil KFC is using. KFC is switching to a low linolenic soybean oil.
McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant company, yesterday said it won’t fight a New York City proposal to ban trans fats. The company said last week it will switch to cooking oils with less than 2 percent trans fat in its 6,300 European restaurants.
A similar plan in the U.S. announced in 2002 stalled because French fries cooked in alternative oils didn’t have the right taste or texture, Chief Executive Officer Jim Skinner said.
New York City’s board of health has called for restaurants to phase out products with trans fats, artificial additives that increase shelf life, by July 2008. The ban is aimed at fighting heart disease, New York’s biggest killer, which caused 40 percent of the deaths in the city last year.
Bad For Cholesterol Eating saturated fat and trans fats raises so-called bad cholesterol and decreases levels of the high-density, or good, cholesterol, increasing the risk of coronary heart disease, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Dow Chemical will boost crop production by as much as 40 percent next year, yielding more than 1 billion pounds of heart- healthy canola oil, spokesman Chris Huntley said.
DuPont Co. and Monsanto Co. are lifting production of soybeans that yield healthier oils. DuPont will more than double production to as much as 500,000 acres, which partner Bunge will turn into about 250 million pounds of oil, said Troy Hobbs, business director of the DuPont-Bunge alliance.
Monsanto plans to triple production to 1.5 million acres of soybeans that yield healthier oil, spokesman Chris Horner said.
-With reporting by Jack Kaskey in New York. Editors: Harrington (cmm).
To contact the reporter on this story: Josh Fineman in New York at +1-212-617-8953 or jfineman@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Nol at +1-212-617-2384 or mnol@bloomberg.net.
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