Fat chance on trans fats

By Diane Prokop
Times Staff Writer

The City Council caucus room took on the feel of a stadium locker room before a big game last week. A cheer went up when Councilwoman Joan Krajewski entered the room — the door decorated with a sign that read Krajewski Bakeries.
That cheer was a prelude to the team’s big win before the City Council Public Health and Human Service Committee, which voted 5-1 on Oct. 10 to endorse the exemption of bakeries from the citywide trans-fat ban.
Krajewski and her throng of bakers testified before committee members Brian O’Neill (R-10th dist.), Donna Reed Miller (D-8th dist.) and at-large colleagues Blondell Reynolds Brown, Juan Ramos, W. Wilson Goode Jr. and James Kenney to seek support of an amendment that Krajewski proposed in May to allow city bakers to continue to use shortening and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil in their family recipes.
Ramos, an author of the ban, was the lone dissenter.
Initially, bakeries were part of the sweeping trans-fat bill signed into law by Mayor John Street in February. Under its provisions, food is considered to contain artificial trans fat if it "labels as, lists as an ingredient, contains or is vegetable shortening, margarine or any kind of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil." A product is considered free of trans fats if it contains less than 0.5 grams per serving.
As part of a growing movement to rid the artery-choking fats, part of Philly’s ban took effect on Sept. 1, prohibiting eateries and a wide range of food businesses from frying foods in trans fats or serving margarine and similar spreads to patrons. In September 2008, according to the law, the ban would be expanded to end the use of trans fats as a recipe ingredient.
That’s the phase that galvanized neighborhood bakery owners to decide they had to save their livelihoods and their legacies for future generations.
During last week’s testimony, bakers told woeful tales of how being forced to find alternatives would affect the texture, consistency and shelf life of their baked goods. For some, the sweet treats have been unchanged for decades, lovingly made in accordance with family recipes that have endured for generations.
"If the taste changes, so does their business," Krajewski told her colleagues on the City Council committee.
She also offered petitions with 15,000 signatures collected at bakery counters throughout the city.
"Pound cake, cannolis and Jewish apple cake never killed anyone. Bullets do," Krajewski said.
The Northeast councilwoman had voted for the original ban but soon championed the plight of the mom-and-pop bakeries when she became convinced that it would be harmful to local businesses, especially those whose cakes and specialty treats have been part of Philadelphia family celebrations for generations.
Krajewski’s 6th district — which includes Mayfair, Holmesburg, Wissinoming, Tacony and Holme Circle — is home to some of the Northeast’s best-known bakeries and diners.
Companies like Tastykake — a Philadelphia institution — have caught a break because the city ban doesn’t apply to prepackaged foods sold at eateries and stores. That goes for prepackaged foods delivered from outside the city, as well.
The ban as written would have allowed cannolis made with trans fats to be shipped here from Cleveland, yet it would have prohibited Termini Brothers from baking and selling the sweet treat at its three Philadelphia locations.
Before the start of the hearing, Krajewski gave a pep talk to her support group of bakers.
"You all did a great job with your petitions. You stuck together. I’m proud of you," Krajewski told them.
"We’re proud of you," answered Richard Haegele, patriarch of a baking family that has operated for years at 4164 Barnett St.
Representatives for Stock’s, Haegele’s, The Dining Car and Termini Brothers, as well as other bakeries, convinced the committee to approve the Krajewski amendment that could put trans fats back in their recipes.
The revision will go before the full City Council for a vote.
During last week’s session, Kris Stock-DeCarles, offering an anecdote about customer loyalty, told committee members about a woman who’d recently visited a bakery at 2614 E. Lehigh Ave. to order a cake for her 50th wedding anniversary. The woman kept looking at Stock-DeCarles and explained how, as a young bride-to-be, she was in the bakery and ordered a wedding cake from a woman who looked just like her.
"I look like her. The woman was my grandmother," the baker said.
That’s the kind of customer loyalty and business legacy enjoyed by family neighborhood bakeries, pointed out some of those merchants at the session.
Kenneth D. Smith, the city Health Department’s director of the division of chronic disease prevention, told the committee that the trans-fat ban was a "proportionate response to remove a harmful substance from the food supply."
Smith explained that trans fats have an adverse impact on cholesterol. He suggested that replacing them with highly saturated natural fats, such as butter, would be a far healthier choice.
When City Councilman Frank DiCicco told Smith he had read that butter wasn’t really healthy, Smith replied that it "may not be as dangerous if you don’t eat too much of it."
That was something the bakers had been saying all along. Their products are treats for special occasions and the holidays, some pointed out.
Nancy Morozin, who co-owns The Dining Car at 8826 Frankford Ave., told committee members that anyone who eats a 10-inch pound cake at one sitting has issues far greater than trans fats.
The amendment was scheduled to be read in City Council on Oct. 18 and presented for a final vote on Oct. 25. Krajewski is confident she has the votes to continue the neighborhood bakers’ sweet tradition. ••
Reporter Diane Prokop can be reached at 215-354-3036 or dprokop@phillynews.com

Here's how to do it . . .

So how easy is it to find a substitute for baking aids like Crisco? Replacing trans fats is not an easy issue for bakers, said Brian Strouts, a spokesman for the American Institute of Baking, in a June interview.
AIB is a national technical resource that helps bakers work through issues or find solutions to business challenges. At issue with trans-fats bans is finding a healthful alternative, how that replacement performs in the baking process, and its taste, cost and shelf life.
"Fat in a baking product has a lot of different results in different products. It functions differently," Strouts said.
Differences in formulation and baking processes also may require bakers to find more than one shortening replacement, which increases costs, he added.
"From a health standpoint, most of the alternatives are based on palm oil. You are replacing trans fats with saturated fats," Strouts said. "From a replacement standpoint in a cake, you always could replace all-purpose shortening with an all liquid for a batter high in sugar and with high amounts of fat.
"Shortening needs to combine itself with the water in the batter. Just going with liquid oil is like an analogy of Italian dressing — you shake it up and it stays together for only so long before it separates," he said. "Cake batter is an emulsified system and will try to do the same thing. That could give a cake low volume and affect the textural aspects of the cake." ••