New York City has just become the first city in the country to regulate the food served in restaurants. If you have a restaurant in New York, beginning next July, you will receive a fine if you serve anything that has trans fat in it. The City Council voted unanimously to approve the ban.

Trans fat is a byproduct of hydrogenated oils. Many years ago, in the early part of the twentieth century, scientists found a way to allow food manufacturers to make food with oil rather than butter. Until then, you could make food with oil, but it would soon separate or spoil. And so you’d use butter, which had a lot of fat in it, and which would remain solid at room temperature and hold up chemically for only a short time. After the discovery of this new hydrogenating process, which involves pumping hydrogen into the oil, the chemical composition of the oil changes slightly and food products made from it remain solid at room temperature and can have a long shelf life.

But now its turned out that, like many other things, what was thought to be good for you is in fact bad for you. The body cannot process foods with trans fat very easily. Unable to process them, it stores them. Thus it winds up as fat in your body and you look fat and are fat. You can’t get it out easily. Butter, which was supposed to leave you fat, does not do so to the extent that trans fat does. Go figure.

A few years ago, the federal government passed a law saying that the percent of trans fat in a product had to be listed as one of the ingredients on the label on the side of the product package. But recently, food manufacturers have found a technical way around the problem. They have found a way to partially hydrogenate oil and though it remains bad for you, it comes up on the meter as having no trans fat. So products say trans fat 0, but in the ingredients it says the product has partially hydrogenated oil, which is legal.

How this will impact the City of New York remains to be seen. New York City is the gourmet capital of America. Zagat says so. Michelin says so. When you go out to eat to a fine restaurant, you know so.

Chefs are going to have to reformulate their recipes. And if things go as planned, New Yorkers, when they travel around the country, will stick out like a sore thumb. They will be the Thin People. The Thin People looking for a good meal. Though it is said that you cannot taste something that has trans fat in it, I don’t believe it. Whenever I eat anything with trans fat in it, I feel as if I have eaten some heavy sort of goo, it makes me very tired, and I want more and more of it.

Look at the packaging before you buy a food product. If it says partially dehydrogenated oil, whether or not it says trans fat 0, don’t buy it. At a restaurant, try to order fresh made things, things that do not require that they be preserved back there in the kitchen. Salads are good. Ring Dings are bad. An apple is good. Chocolate Mousse is bad. But you knew that.

I do worry that all of this might just be politics. Pass something like this that is good for your health and everybody cheers. But then we find out that partially dehydrogenated oil can make you fat and they’ve found a way to say it has trans fat 0 and they can make that stick. So this means nothing.

I think all the fat people in America — all you have to do is watch an old movie made before the 1970s to see how slender and normal everybody was compared to today when so many people just look dreadfully obese — have wound up fat because of economic competition. A hamburger tastes good. A hamburger with trans fat or partially hydrogenated oil tastes better. So the crowds go where things taste better and then they waddle home and wonder what happened. What happens is they feel good about the food they ate, but they are at increased risk for diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and they need a nap.

From that point of view, in the next year or two, until the whole state and the rest of the country gets the idea that what the city is doing is the right thing to do, the restaurants in the Hamptons just might be in for a windfall. Like the speakeasies during prohibition, we are just a short ride from Manhattan, we’ve got the first class restaurants, and they will still be serving this great tasting stuff that makes you fat. Come on out, pardner.

Of course, the Hamptons could make the ban itself. Maybe Southampton but not East Hampton, or East Hampton but not Southampton. So you’ll have fat people here and thin people there or vice versa.

Or individual restaurants in the Hamptons could meet the challenge and declare themselves trans fat and partially hydrogenated oil free too. We shall see.