KFC bans trans-fat in chicken: Are they pulling our leg?

My advertising radar blipped with guarded glee when I heard KFC was being wildly applauded as the hero of the hour for ditching their trans-fats in fried foods in favor of a low linolenic soybean oil.

KFC’s drive-through banners tout “Feed your family for under $4!” and “Looney Tunes Laptop meals designed just for kids” so my initial take on this news was a bit cynical, “gee, kids can now order a cheap heart attack on a plate and parents will be duped into thinking it’s new, improved & finger-lickin’ healthy.”

Michele Simon, head of Center for Informed Food Choices has written an insightful new book outlining rhetoric vs. reality when it comes to food industry change, so I figured I’d put the KFC news through her policy paces to see if they just have an ‘Appetite for Profit’ or if there are far-reaching implications that benefit us all.

Good news! So far, it appears this fast food maneuver passes the sniff test, with some potentially FABULOUS trickle down benefits for a healthier planet. However…

…I see some Super Sized mixed messages from their parent company, “Yum!” Brands, who has Taco Bell promoting a ‘fourth meal’ to restless TEENS between dinner and breakfast.

They’ll need to sweep up their house of hypocrisy and clean up their zero trans-fat and marketing messages at Pizza Hut, A&W, and Long John Silver Brands in order to inch toward positive progress for kids.

Before you shrug it off as ‘who cares, I don’t touch the stuff’…

Or, ‘kids will eat fast food regardless so this doesn’t solve squat’…

Remind yourself that America’s obesity problem IS your problem, because it’s hitting you smack dab in the pocketbook.

According to the Keystone Forum research study on ‘Away from Home’ foods, medical expenses attributed to overweight and obesity issues are estimated to have reached $92.6 billion PER YEAR, which is 9.1% of the total U.S. expenditures.

Toss in the long term health care crisis of kids with Type 2 diabetes, early signs of heart disease and a generation of kids at risk for the first time ever of having a shorter life expectancy and higher mortality rate than their parents, and you can see how this will impact you, whether your family habits are healthy or not.

YOUR family may not eat KFC, or ANY franchise takeout, but chances are good that trans-fat plays a role somewhere in your life, since the FDA says artificial trans fat is so common that the average American eats 4.7 pounds of it a year.

Researchers at Harvard’s School of Public Health estimated that trans fats contribute to 30,000 U.S. deaths a year.

There’s talk that fast food should mandate nutrition info right up front, so people KNOW what they’re eating. In fairness, many corporate websites house this enlightening info, including KFC, but point of purchase would be MUCH more impactful. (which is why it will probably never occur)

Dr. Robert H. Eckel, immediate past president of the American Heart Association spoke of trans-fats with pointblank candor, “This is something we’d like to dismiss from our food supply.”

Many of us are still grappling with even more basic questions like: What IS trans-fat? Why is it so bad, and how did it ever get into the food supply to begin with?

But look around, it’s there…Trans-fats, sat-fats and junk food are pervasive in record quantities.

Kids can’t even seem to be on a sports team without ‘snack’ pouches of processed crud being passed out to negate what little athletic activity has transpired. Preschool snacks? Let’s see, an entire TEACHING curriculum brought to you by Fruit Loops.

Lunchables? On most every primary playground I’ve ever seen. After school district homework clubs? More foil-pouched trans-fat junk.

Teen scene? Date night drive-throughs, and soda staples, followed by the plethora of new sodium/sugar laden sports & energy drinks all with factual implications for adolescent growth.

I’m still trying to get a handle on how we started accepting these offerings as ‘food’ much less how we shifted into this toxic trans-fat lifestyle.

Removing trans-fats and raising awareness of how trans-fats contribute to heart disease with artery-clogging cholesterol is great, but we need to really take a hard look at how our entire way of eating has changed…along with the processed ‘choices’ for consumption too.

If it can’t be wrapped, sealed, labeled, and branded, America’s pretty much abandoned it, since that’s where corporate coffers make their bucks.

Case in point, our “tween” volleyball team was cooing the other day at how ‘cool’ the Earthbound Farm organic apples were that I brought for ‘snack.’ Guess why? They’re individually wrapped, sliced, handy, and ready for the lunchbox purchased from Costco.

Granted, no trans-fats; organic apples were an easily-distributed-harried-mom solution.(as McDonalds would say, “It’s what I eat and what I do.” —But I’M NOT “lovin’ it” because convenience packaging like this takes its toll on the planet too, and that was my lazy way of adding to the problem)

This is part of America’s fast-n-frenzied lifestyle, and even the sliver shifting toward ‘slow foods’ and ‘whole foods’ need to be aware it’s a very slight dent, with glacial movement.

One fifth of America’s meals are now consumed in the family car, a third of U.S. parents eat takeout regularly, and 39% of consumers use a drive-through at least once a week.

And passing judgment on those facts with a ‘not me’ high brow tone seems akin to those skewed TV polls where suddenly everyone is tuned to pbs instead of silly sitcoms or raunchy reality shows.

Just ain’t happenin,’ folks. So let’s get real.

“Perfect parents” claiming to have a homemade sit-down dinner nightly are either blowin’ smoke or miracle workers, because even the most avid full-time, stay-at-home parent is often hard-pressed with over-time volunteer expectations from schools, sports teams, fundraising and co-op demands carving into daily logistics.

Am I right?

The pace of society has accelerated, and grab-n-go tendencies prevail, so we need to remind ourselves that we can’t solve kids’ obesity epidemic without looking at the reality of how people eat and then make changes at the food supply and policy levels.

Here’s what some notable industry leaders said about KFC’s new policy:

“It’s huge. It’s going to be the trendsetter for the entire country,” said Suzanne Vieira, director of the culinary nutrition program at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island where students experiment with substitute oils and shortenings.

“Colonel Sanders deserves a bucket full of praise,” crowed Michael Jacobsen of Center for Science in the Public Interest, who normally is the bellwether for food industry skepticism.

I tried to contact Michele Simon for an interview or find a quote on her new Big Food Watch blog but alas, she’s still on her east coast book tour.

Instead, I used her book’s corporate gauge of motivation and profiteering to assess why I think KFC’s move to eliminate trans-fats has some serious chops.

Here goes:

1.) KFC tested trans-fat removal secretly for two years on their customers to ensure they didn’t lose market share based on a flavor shift. (financial self-interest/checkpoint one)

2.) KFC announced their plans an hour ahead of a public hearing on a proposal that would make New York the first U.S. city to ban trans-fats. (PR self-interest trump-card/ checkpoint two, avoid regulation, self-rein for control, ‘do the right thing’ policy)

3.) KFC set a finite date of April 2007 for phasing in zero-trans-fat chicken oil to ALL of their 5500 U.S. stores. (trackable, first strike competitive slam, checkpoint three)

This last maneuver’s particularly clever, for it reveals empty promise purveyors like McDonalds who press-blitzed this baby way back in 2002, never stepped up to the plate, and rightly assumed no one one would really notice aside from a few relentless food advocates and media jabs…

You KNOW the media’s all over this now making comparisons between the two. In fact, check out USA Today’s left sidebar to see what other fast food players are doing on the trans-fat front.

4.) Finally, fast food outlets, casual dining and restaurant industry lobbyists with a ‘no can do’ attitude will now have to scramble to keep pace with KFC, or they’ll risk looking like liars or losers. Not pretty on the shareholder scene. (checkpoint four, my absolute fave!)

So there you have it. The gauntlet has been thrown down.

KFC has launched a no excuses effort that should benefit kids, curb the trans-fat tide, and start to cinch the obesity belt in this country.

As Jacobson said, “If KFC, which deep-fries almost everything, can get the artificial trans-fat out of its frying oil, anyone can.”

Jacobson even dismissed the CSPI lawsuit against KFC which appears to be a good faith effort he’s confident this will stick.

Yes, kids will continue to beg for fast food crud, even if they know it’s not good for them. (too much preaching could even make it ‘contraband’ and up the ante)

Yes, teens will be subjected to gross portion distortion promos piled high and wide, like Burger King’s ‘quad-stackers’ promo for 4-meat patties on a bun, egad.

And yes, there is still a desperate need to reverse the coolness caché surrounding unhealthy choices. The new caffeine energy drinks are particularly subversive, positioning ‘rebellion’ as a marketing lure to entice kids to walk on their wild side.

They’re vying for the dollars of teenagers with “promises of weight loss, increased endurance and legal highs” to the tune of 80% growth in a $3.4 billion-a-year industry of top-selling brands like Monster, Rockstar & Red Bull. Definitely ones to watch next.

But reviewing just the fast food category, KFC’s move seems to be a healthy START in a very promising direction, as long as we keep a keen eye on the spin-doctoring, and avoid being lulled into complacency.

Most of us scan headline news as we bolt out the door figuring, “crisis averted, things are on the right track,” but we’re only skimming the surface of the country’s mammoth problem…

Unlike fast food, KFC’s trans-fat policy seems crisp, fresh and worthy.