It is possible to be fined from $200 up to $2,000

A number of restaurants in New York have been hit with fines after failing to conform to the trans fats ban which is now in place all over the city. New York City recently became the first city in the world to completely forbid the use of these artery clogging fats which are found in heavily fried food.

It all twenty restaurants around New York were handed trans fat violation tickets between the first and the fifth of October. The restaurants were located in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Overall however the City Council said that they had looked at over 500 different restaurants around the city and therefore the fact that they only issued fines for twenty restaurants is a sign that the majority of New York’s restaurants are complying with the new health policy.

The tran fat ban has in fact been in effect in New York since the first of July however people who own restaurants had been given a three month period of grace before the actual fines would be enacted. It is possible to be fined from $200 up to $2,000 and an appeals tribunal has been set up to hear any grievances from restaurant owners should they think that they have been unfairly penalised.

The majority of the restaurants who were given trans fat fines had been found with margarine which is known to contain a big amount of this type of fat. Another restaurant was given a fine for using oil for cooking which did not have the proper labelling on it to inform people about the trans fat content. This particular restaurant called Ballato will be fighting the fine at the tribunal because the owner said that the oil he was using was peanut oil and that he had never used trans fat in cooking his restaurant food. Ballato is famous in New York for being a celebrity hangout.