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Life & Times Transcript

2/19/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

We've all heard how bad trans fats are for us. Is there any question they should be banned?

Andrew Casana>> The next oil we switch to, are we going to be coming back in ten years and have this same conversation? Wait a minute, now this one isn't good for you?

Val Zavala>> And then, the cold may have turned your lush, green landscaping brown, but don't grab the pruning shears just yet. We'll get some expert advice.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Hena Cuevas>> Late last year, New York City announced that, starting in July, all of its restaurants would have to stop using trans fats in the preparation of their food. Now Los Angeles is thinking about doing the same thing. But what are trans fats and are they really that harmful for you? Also, why after years of being considered to be a healthier alternative, they're now going the way of saturated fats?

It's the reason those restaurant french fries come out so crunchy and taste so good, and why that pastry simply melts in your mouth. It's oil, or fat, an essential ingredient in any kind of cooking. Most restaurants, especially fast food places, use trans fats. The long name for them is partially hydrogenated oils. One example is shortening.

But in recent years, studies have shown that consuming large amounts of these trans fats is harmful. It can increase the chance of heart attacks. So last December, the city of New York announced that it was banning trans fats from all of its restaurants. Now Los Angeles wants to do the same.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> Trans fats are not really natural products anyway. They're partially hydrogenated vegetable oils that are not good for us.

Hena Cuevas>> Dr. Jonathan Fielding is the Director of the Department of Public Health.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> If you go to a restaurant now, you have no idea. You don't know if the fried food was cooked with trans fats or not.

Hena Cuevas>> Are they really that bad for you or is it just the amounts that we've been consuming?

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> No, they do raise the bad cholesterol, the LDL cholesterol. They lower the good cholesterol and they appear to increase inflammation of the lining of the arteries, so they are bad for you.

Hena Cuevas>> But would a New York style ban on trans fats work in Los Angeles?

Andrew Casana>> I think that we can get a program done here that you can use throughout the state.

Hena Cuevas>> Making that transition won't be easy, according to Andrew Casana of the California Restaurant Association.

Andrew Casana>> There's a lot of research that has to be done before you anoint something as the new trans fat alternative.

Hena Cuevas>> The Restaurant Association is working with Fielding to see how a ban could be phased in. Trans fats work well because they last long. Finding an appropriate replacement is the biggest challenge.

Andrew Casana>> There's a lot of oils out there, but some of them basically have what we call a fry time. It's like how long the life is when they're in the deep fryer. Some can't handle the high heat. So in turn what happens is, you have a burnt taste.

Hena Cuevas>> But what will a ban like this mean for restaurants as they make their transitions? According to Casana, the larger chains really won't have a problem since they've already been working on alternatives. He says the biggest problems will be with the smaller restaurants as they try and figure options that not only will maintain the quality of their food, but also keep their prices down. That's because the new oils are about twenty-five percent more expensive, says Casana.

Andrew Casana>> The new oils will hold three to four days' shelf life, so it means it burns quicker. So if you go into like a fifth and sixth day and you're trying to stretch it, you're going to have that burnt flavor taste or a flavor on the food that you don't want there, so it doesn't last nearly as long.

Hena Cuevas>> It's taken KFC about four years to find an appropriate oil to fry their chicken, and McDonald's recently announced that it finally found a cooking oil that doesn't alter the taste of their world-famous fries.

Christopher Becker>> And what you have, for all intents and purposes, is the functioning restaurant.

Hena Cuevas>> Christopher Becker is the founder and director of the Kitchen Academy, a school for chefs. For years, he's been working with the so-called healthy oils.

Christopher Becker>> Anything that's mass-produced is a cost benefit. You know, the food industry is in business to make money. Hydrogenated products, hydrogenated oils, are put into products to extend their shelf life. The longer those products can sit on the shelves, the longer the manufacturers and ultimately the retailers have to sell them to us.

Hena Cuevas>> There is a challenge in being able to move from using these oils to using these oils and trying to preserve the taste. What is the problem with that? What are they facing?

Christopher Becker>> Well, it is complicated. One of the issues is cost, which is dramatic. When you look, for instance, at the difference between not only having to recalibrate recipes and specifications, especially for baking, to accommodate maybe butter or a non trans fat type of shortening, that's one issue. The cost.

Hena Cuevas>> Examples of some potential alternatives are olive oil, canola, peanut, and soybean oil. But these, says Becker, are more delicate. They break down a lot faster, so they can't be used as long.

Christopher Becker>> Anytime you heat oil, the chemistry of the oil changes. Some oils tolerate heat better than others. Some oils, like olive oil, if they're heated to a high level, begin to create toxins. Toxins occur in the oil that's really injurious to human health. As professionals, we need to be aware of the point at which an oil becomes toxic.

Hena Cuevas>> Also when you change the oil, you affect the taste, so restaurant owners will have to test every one of their dishes searching for the right combination.

Andrew Casana>> You've got to think of that. When they're doing the research to make this change, they have to purchase that food, try it with all these new oils, so they can't sell that food. That's a hit right there alone. Then on top of that, if they do make the switch, twenty-five percent more in cost. That's a big hit for a small business owner.

Hena Cuevas>> The oils are also expensive because they make up only a small portion of the total market. According to Casana, it's the consumer who will bear the cost.

Andrew Casana>> A small business owner is going to have to pass that on and they're probably going to pass the price. It's hard to say how much the exact cost will be on the menu item, but how much can you charge for a hot dog? You get to a point where it gets so high that you can't charge too much. So it will definitely affect the prices.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> First of all, if you look at the food cost as a portion of what you're paying for when you go out to a meal, it's a relatively small portion surprisingly. Then if you look beyond that and say, well, what portion of all the food ingredients are the cooking oil or the oil used in baking, it's also a small portion. So I don't think this is going to have a significant increase in pricing.

Christopher Becker>> It's a deeply rooted issue. It's a problem and really the only way to solve it is essentially to outlaw trans fats, to force the food producers by law to stop putting them into the food and then, like everything else in our culture, the producers will enforce the change.

Hena Cuevas>> Casana says this whole issue reminds him of the 1980s when the restaurant industry switched from saturated fats such as lard and butter after it was determined they weren't healthy. Saturated fats were replaced by partially hydrogenated ones, shortening and margarine, which then became staples in every restaurant.

Andrew Casana>> So we all changed. Everybody started changing. It was a fantastic product. All of a sudden in the mid-1990s, you know, people started saying, wait a minute, this isn't good for you. That's when a lot of the larger chains started saying, well, we need to make this change.

Hena Cuevas>> Now it seems it's happening all over again, so Casana recommends moving slowly to make sure history doesn't repeat itself.

Andrew Casana>> Okay, the next oil we switch to, are we going to be coming back in ten years and having the same conversation? Wait a minute, now isn't good for you? That's why I think it's imperative that the industry works with the health departments, nutritionists, to come up with a healthy alternative that's affordable that we can all live with and not have to worry about this again in years to come.

Hena Cuevas>> Fielding presented his findings at the end of January. The city decided on a phase-out, but found out it can only recommend that restaurants follow it. Only the state can call for a complete ban on trans fats. I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> The recent cold snap did millions of dollars of damage to California's citrus crop, but it also turned plenty of our back yard plants brown. So what do we do now and how do we avoid damage in the future?

For some advice, we came to an expert, Jim Folsom, director of the extensive and beautiful botanical gardens at The Huntington in San Marino. He says that temperatures there dropped down to nineteen degrees and stayed cold for three days, the sharpest cold snap in a decade. That turned plants like this normally lush green palm to this.

Jim Folsom>> What we're seeing is leaf loss and we hope that's all. These leaves will have to be later on in the year taken off. Hopefully, the growing apex is fine and it will push a new set of leaves.

Val Zavala>> Now back up there because this is all really good information. First of all, the leaves are normally green and they turn brown.

Jim Folsom>> They're done in, right.

Val Zavala>> But you said you hope it's just leaf and not the stem?

Jim Folsom>> I hope it's just the leaves. This is one leaf.

Val Zavala>> Oh, this is one leaf.

Jim Folsom>> This is one leaf. This is not a palm. This is a Cycad. The growing point is down there, better protected. If we're fortunate, then what will happen is, after a while, sitting and pondering, the plant will send up a new set of leaves and these will become old news.

Val Zavala>> Now should they cut these off or just wait a little while?

Jim Folsom>> Okay, what we recommend, what we do at The Huntington, is that we don't touch anything until after the last chance of frost. What you want to do is you want to wait and see how much damage you really had. Now in some cases, we know this is lost, but other plants don't show the loss yet. It'll be anywhere from four days to four months before we really know how serious the damage has been in especially things like trees, shrubs and desert plants.

In other plants that are more tender like you forget and leave the celery in the refrigerator in the compartment in the bottom of the freezer and it freezes, you know when you bring it out that it's a loss. So in green, succulent, normal everyday plants, you know when it's lost. But in these other succulent desert garden plants and in shrubs and bushes, you often don't know sometimes for several months.

Val Zavala>> The best is to just leave it be.

Jim Folsom>> Leave it alone.

Val Zavala>> Okay.

Jim Folsom>> The tissue that's already lost now is going to help protect the other in case there's another cold snap.

Val Zavala>> Oh, that's good to know.

Jim Folsom>> If you start cutting back and cleaning out and we get a warm spell, then the plant will get the message that it's time to start growing again. Buds that are still alive will start growing out, then you get a cold spell, and they're knocked back. So don't do anything to engender new growth.

Val Zavala>> To make matters worse, the drop in temperatures was sudden and didn't give plants a chance to harden off. Hardening off is when a plant adjusts chemically, allowing it to withstand even colder temperatures, but that had not happened.

Jim Folsom>> This has been a very warm year, so the plants were not hardened off. This was a real shock to them. Bam! From eighty-five degrees to nineteen degrees. What that means is, the plants can't accommodate the formation of ice in its cells and the ice then destroys the cells.

Val Zavala>> I see.

Jim Folsom>> You have actual physical damage that destroys the cells.

Val Zavala>> So what happened to this plant? First of all, what kind is it?

Jim Folsom>> Well, this is a jasmine. This one is called Angelwing. It's a little bit more tender than the other jasmines. We were hoping that the presence of this building would give it some protection and I think it has. You can see that probably this part of the stem is still good.

You can see down in the shrub and there's a lot of green. But you can see that the tips are a loss. This is a total loss. Certainly in other places, well, this is a good shrub to cut back. We'll wait until mid-March and we'll come in and we'll take it down to a foot above the ground. By the end of the summer, it will look like this again.

Val Zavala>> Really?

Jim Folsom>> You have to know what each plant can tolerate, what kind of treatment. This one is fine. I have seen it get cold enough to completely kill it, but if this were in a different place in the garden, it might be gone.

The way things work out in the garden, especially in southern California, means that you can choose one place over another and get a totally different impact on your plant material. This spot right here is pretty cold, but it's not as cold as a low spot because cold air works like a river. It'll flow through an area and it'll puddle in low spots.

Val Zavala>> Even a raised bed or on top of a slope?

Jim Folsom>> A raised bed, phenomenal things like a little bit of cover. Even if this had had a tree over it, a little bit of shade, that might have protected this plant. It's not like the frost comes down on it. What the tree does, it keeps the heat in. When we get the coldest, what's happening is that the sky is clear and there's not much air movement and all the heat is radiating off and the air is cold anyway. So how do you defeat that?

Well, one way is by blanketing the area, having your tender plants under some cover like a canopy of trees. In our back yard in this freeze, for example, we have a very big set of eaves off the house, very deep, about four feet. There are begonias right under the eaves and they're in perfect shape under the eaves and, just outside the eaves, burned off like someone melted them. But that little bit of protection kept the heat in. Now another way is to protect with water, oddly enough.

Val Zavala>> I wondered about that. Should you water if you know it's going to get cold?

Jim Folsom>> Well, you shouldn't water the plants, but if you know it's going to freeze, you might try something like watering above the ground. That's what some orchards do. But the benefit of that is the water is warm and not frozen because it's above freezing. It can save these because it's a few degrees from freezing. So the water is warm and it keeps the plant warmer. But the other thing, as the water turns to ice, it releases heat because, when water goes from one phase to the next, it either takes heat to push it up or it loses heat to go down.

Val Zavala>> Now for the average homeowner who may not have fans and sprinklers and whatnot, what's the best thing we can do to protect their plants?

Jim Folsom>> Well, it's really tough because we can go for weeks and it's almost freezing and then, all of a sudden, one night you get a freeze. But if you know that it's going to freeze, if you've got good warning which we had in advance this time, and you've got a special plant that you know is more tender, you can take a blanket and just put a blanket over it.

What you find is a curious thing. The blanket will keep some of the heat in, but the other kind of frost damage you get which is not what we got this time -- this time it actually froze -- but the lighter frost damage, you get this freezing of the tissue, the leaves.

If they thaw gently, they'll probably be all right. But when the sun hits them, you can go out and see that there's burning on the plants where the sun hit it first thing in the morning. That's also counter-intuitive because you think the sun is going to rescue the plant.

Well, what happens is that the sun dries out the tissue before it unfreezes and can respire properly. The sun fries it before it starts functioning. So if you can protect it from that, then in a light frost, you'll save the whole appearance of the plant.

Val Zavala>> So a blanket. How about plastic, a big plastic bag?

Jim Folsom>> Plastic bags, sure.

Val Zavala>> Any kind of covering or is there some covering that's not worth it?

Jim Folsom>> I would guess almost anything can work. Anything you can do to keep some heat in and keep the plant from just radiating off what little heat it has. We find that plastic bags work in another way. People who are trying to get an early start on the season will often use plastic bags to make little greenhouses around their plants to actually get more day heat because the plastic bag will hold in greenhouse heat in a way. So there's all sorts of uses for things like that.

Val Zavala>> Well, Jim Folsom, thank you for your very sound advice and we will watch the weather very carefully.

Jim Folsom>> Watch the weather and don't cut anything back until the Ides of March, okay?

Val Zavala>> Excellent. Great advice (laughter). Thank you so much.

Jim Folsom>> Okay. Thanks for coming.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> There's a rumor going around that a river runs through Los Angeles. Well, we can put that rumor to rest. Take a look. Here it is, the Los Angeles River. Now a lot of it is just a concrete channel, but in parts like this part near Glendale, nature seems to be making a comeback and some of it is downright scenic as we found out from talking with Friends of the Los Angeles River.

Joe Linton>> My name is Joe Linton. I'm the Outreach Director for Friends of the Los Angeles River. So right now, we're in one of the nicest parts of the river. This is called Frogtown, or often it's Elysian Valley. It's just north of downtown Los Angeles. It's in a section called the Glendale Narrows. This is, you know, a soft bottom section.

Actually, there's groundwater coming up from under in this area, so when the river was concreted, they left the bottom natural so you get a lot of turtles and ducks and herons and geese and there are coots and there are osprey, kind of fish hawks that are hunting. There are actually carp. There are people fishing in this section often, so this is really one of the nicest areas. This is about eight miles. It's a great place to walk. It's a great place to take a bike ride.

The river runs fifty-two miles from Canoga Park in the west end of the San Fernando Valley through downtown Los Angeles all the way down to Long Beach. Most of that is concrete. I mean, the river did use to flood, so after two large floods in the 1930s, we poured a lot of concrete. We poured five billion dollars worth of concrete, but there are three sections of the river that have what are called soft bottoms or natural bottoms.

There's what called the Sepulveda Basin that's up in the valley where the 101 and the 405 Freeways come together, what's called Lake Balboa, Balboa Park, a very nice section with a wildlife preserve. In the middle of Los Angeles from Griffith Park to Elysian Park, there's about an eight mile stretch with soft bottoms that we're looking at right now.

Then there's also the estuary in Long Beach which is downstream of Willow Street. There's about three miles where the ocean interacts with the river and, again, you get pelicans and ducks and fish and whatnot that you don't get in the more concrete parts.

Friends of the Los Angeles River is offering a new event tour package thing that we're doing. We're doing day-long guided tours of the river. We gather at the L.A. River Center at ten a.m., take you to six different sites along the river, some of the nicest natural parts like this and a few of the really nasty concrete ones.

So you can check out the areas that are starting to change and areas that are nice and also areas that are a lot of concrete, but are targeted for restoration especially where the city of Los Angeles is doing what's called the Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan is looking at some areas where they're actually looking and taking out concrete and naturalizing the river near very close to downtown Los Angeles.

We're standing right now at the confluence of the Arroyo Seco and the Los Angeles River. Actually today, it's kind of a graffiti pit and an intersection of freeways and train tracks and infrastructure. But it's actually an historic site for Los Angeles. This is where, in 1769, Europeans first encountered the Los Angeles River and the Los Angeles area and wrote about it as a lush and pleasant spot in every respect.

It's a pretty barren concrete area today, but it's actually one of the more popular spots on our tours. We walk people down the ramp and check it out and kind of see what it looks like today and learn about plans to do a confluence park in this area to celebrate the beginning of Los Angeles and the confluence of the two waterways where Los Angeles was founded.

There are many kinds of new small parks called pocket parks with native trees and public art and benches, sort of little rest stops along a bike path, that's beginning to string along the river. So we're sort of seeing like what we call the Emerald Necklace. It's sort of a string of parks. It's not all natural, but it's beginning to emerge, what we call a greenway from the mountains to the sea.

I like to think of the river as a testament to the persistence of nature. As much as we've trashed and neglected it and concreted and, you know, tried to kill the Los Angeles River, when you see it, it still supports a great deal of wildlife, much more than other parts of our city. So it show that nature persists, even as much as we try to, you know, not think that we have nature in Los Angeles. You can't ignore it when you're down at the Los Angeles River.

Give us a call or come to the Friends of the Los Angeles River website at www.folar.org and let us know. Come down to the river and check it out and get involved.

Val Zavala>> It's a species native to southern California and vital to our economy and yet it's disappearing, but there is something we can do about it. Life and Times commentator, Cris Franco, explains.

Cris Franco>> Oh, there goes one! Star sightings are one of the best perks of residing in Los Angeles, right up there with eternal sunshine and knowing that I'm never more than one hundred feet away from a four dollar cup of gourmet coffee. Umm, that smells expensive.

Yes, celebrities are an integral part of the wildlife in Hollywood and, like the Spotted Owl, they're a rare, fragile, life form that requires special care and constant upkeep. But paparazzi now have a new way to track celebrities via twenty-four online sites that can be accessed by any Blackberry anywhere.

[Film Clip]

Cris Franco>> This technology is threatening our celebrity habitat and driving our luminaries away like a vampire at a garlic festival. These cyber-savvy scavengers are hunting the famous to the point where they're scared for their extraordinary lives and many are starting to leave the Southland.

[Film Clip]

Cris Franco>> Friends, PBS supporters and nature lovers, I'm certain you all agree that this would be an entertainment industry disaster of Gigli proportions.

[Film Clip]

Cris Franco>> Media stars are our native California species and, like the Kangaroo Rat, they too must be protected. The Malibu, Hollywood Hills and Encino building boom is threatening their once expensive sanctuaries and the consequences of the Southland stars is chilling. Think of all the dog shrinks, microbiotic chefs, tantric chiropractors, hybrid car mechanics, lipo clinic receptionists and non-English speaking nannies that would be unemployed.

Celebrities perform a vital function, showing us what to wear --

[Film Clip]

Cris Franco>> -- serving as beacons to the horrors of over-botoxification, all while leading us to the new hot spots like the new Opaque Restaurant where A-listers pay one hundred dollars per person to consume a three-course meal of salad, steak and strawberries, all in complete darkness. Without celebrities, we'd never know that dining in the dark was "cool".

Therefore, I ask you to join my new organization, S.O.S., Save Our Stars. It's hard work to be famous and we must protect them not just for their sakes. If Andy Warhol was correct and we're all in for fifteen minutes of fame --

[Film Clip]

Cris Franco>> -- when I finally get mine, I don't want some Cris Franco head rifling through my trash and selling my awful freshman year picture on eBay. Well, not without me getting my cut anyway.

Let's keep our native species here where they belong so that future Los Angeles generations can delight at the graceful beauty of the Gwyneth at Gelson's and the splendor of the Freddie Prinze, Jr. at Carl's Jr. Let the rest of the country protect the Bald Eagle. I'm protecting the Baldwins.

Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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