PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The movement to ban artery-clogging trans fats from food has a new venue: cooking schools.
The places that train the people who will someday be feeding the rest of us are cutting back or eliminating artificial trans fats from their classrooms, saying they have a responsibility to teach students how to cook healthy foods.
“It’s a very welcome change,” said John O’Connell, 19, a sophomore culinary arts student at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, one of the nation’s largest cooking schools, which also has a campus in Denver.
The school has started phasing out trans fats in its restaurants, hotels and dining services on four campuses across the country and plans to be trans-fat-free by the fall semester.
“We have made sure that we do the right thing,” said Karl J. Guggenmos, dean of culinary education.
Other cooking schools, such as Le Cordon Bleu Schools North America, are looking at reducing or eliminating trans fats, said Kirk Bachmann of Le Cordon Bleu, which is based in Hoffman Estates, Ill. The prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., banned trans fats from nearly all its classes and restaurants in 2005.
Artificial trans fats are often found in oils used to deep-fry foods such as french fries and in baked goods. Bakers like to use shortenings with trans fats because cakes stay fresher longer, frosting is easier to use and they cost less than butter.
Trans fats are created when hydrogen is added to liquid cooking oils to harden them. Along with saturated fats, they raise levels of so-called bad cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease.
New York City banned cooking oils with trans fat from all restaurants last year, and several states and cities have debated similar measures.
Several fast-food restaurant chains are switching to trans-fat-free cooking oils.
At the Culinary Institute of America, trans fat is one of the “hot button” topics, said school spokesman Stephan Hengst.
“Once they get out in the industry, they’ve got to understand it,” he said of students.
Eliminating it from some recipes was relatively easy — butter and olive oil are often good substitutes. But baking was different.
Getting the right texture, color, smell and taste was tricky and took a lot of trial and error, said Wanda Cropper, who oversees the school’s baking and pastry institute.
“Baking is a science. You can’t just substitute,” she said.
Guggenmos estimates it will cost about 5 percent more for the trans-fat-free ingredients, although that could ease as the market grows for such products.
