Burger King has been slow off the mark but like its big rival McDonald’s it has decided to get serious about finding an alternative type of cooking oil for its burgers and fries. The reason for this is that the present oil for cooking that they use is hydrogenated vegetable oil that is great for adding taste and flavour to the food but terrible for producing a fat that is much more likely to clog your arteries than other types of fat.

Any vegetable oils that are hydrogenated or even partially hydrogenated will produce trans fat as a by product and this process of cooking is being fought on all fronts by health watchers, nutritionists and even legislators in some American States that have sought to outlaw the unhealthy trans fat from restaurants and supermarkets.

Burger King reckons that it will be in a situation to cook all of its food using trans fat free oils in a couple of years and stated that they have been trying many different cooking options and have already got customers to try the new cooking oils and are studying feedback.

New York City is moving ahead fast with anti trans fat legislation that will have the big burger chains all trans fat free by July 2007. All big restaurants chains have had to jump on the health wagon and remove trans fat from all their menus and the exercise is being hailed as a great step in the battle to beat obesity and heart disease.

This doesn’t mean that you can go to Burger King and eat as much as you like, just that if you were to eat at Burger King all the time the chances of you getting heart disease and being obese are now slightly lower.

It is likely that Los Angeles will be the 2nd city in the United States to ban the use of hydrogenated vegetable oils for cooking in restaurants.