Starbucks is the latest chain to try to jump on the no-trans fats bandwagon, trying to demonstrate to customers how much they care about health and nutrition. Starting this week, approximately half of the stores in the US, including those in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, will have zero trans fats on their menus.
The company says that they have been planning the switch for two years now and that their nationally distributed pastries, primarily seasonal items like the Gingerbread loaf cake, are already trans-fat free. The rest of their pastries are baked by regional bakeries, which Starbucks contracts to provide pastries for their stores. These pastries vary from region to region, as do the recipes for them, so not every supplier has yet made a switch, but Starbucks seems to anticipate that it will not be long before they do.
So, if you're not located in one of the aforementioned areas of the country, does that mean you need to worry about trans fats at Starbucks? Not where drinks are concerned. According to the nutritional information on their website, very few of their drink products contain trans fats and those that do have only a very minimal amount. The pastries, on the other hand, vary widely by region, but judging from a random sampling of regional nutritional data (offered by zip code on the Starbucks website) your best bet will be a muffin or loaf cake if you want to minimize your trans-fat intake without cutting out pastries all together, at least until your area is declared trans-fat free, too.
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