I Can't Believe It's Not Legal

Those darned sneaky trans fats, they get into everything. Even good wholesome natural food like butter and cream:

In a twist of science, the law and what some call trans-fat hysteria, [baker Matthew] Reich and other wholesale bakers are being forced to substitute processed fats like palm oil and margarine for good old-fashioned butter because of the small amounts of natural trans fat butter contains.

While the New York trans fat ban only discriminates against artificial trans fat, many companies see trouble for all kinds of trans fats on the horizon, and hope to save themselves trouble by forcing their suppliers to go completely trans fat free right off the bat:

"Things like a New York ban on trans fats create hysteria, and when you create hysteria people overreact, and when people overreact they start taking whole food groups out of their diet because there might be a little trans in it," [said Greg Miller, a spokesman for the National Dairy Council].

The major casualty, croissants:

"We've gone back and replaced all of the nice, good butter with supposedly trans fat-free margarine," said Rick Doyle, the Schwartz [bakery] regional manager. "The hardest one for us was the croissant. We replaced butter with palm oil. From my perspective it's not a croissant any more. It's lost all its lamination and flavor."