How KFC Went Trans-Fat Free

Protests and New York's upcoming ban have forced fast-food eateries to seek new ways to fry meals. KFC found a solution, but it wasn't cheap

by Michael Arndt

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Doug Hasselo was pumped. The chief food-innovation officer at KFC had spent more than 18 months and millions of dollars on the fast-food chain's top-priority project: creating a frying oil that had all the attributes of the vegetable oil KFC had been using, without its unhealthy trans fats. And on a Monday morning last January, the company's senior executives were at their weekly "leadership team" meeting taste-testing chicken that had been deep-fried in a canola oil. This one, Hasselo hoped, would finally do the trick.

Going around their conference-room table, however, the seven executives turned thumbs down. "Nothing was dreadful," recalls KFC President Gregg Dedrick. "The product was actually very close." But the new oil masked the 11 herbs and spices in the company's trademark recipe, the panelists agreed, and the chicken wasn't quite as crispy. Hasselo was sent back to his kitchen laboratory at KFC's headquarters in Louisville to try again.

Over the last few years, makers of packaged food have raced to eliminate or reduce trans fats, spurred by a Food & Drug Administration rule requiring nutritional labels to list trans-fat content starting in 2006. Today, it's the restaurant industry's turn to step it up. Next July, New York City—the nation's No. 1 restaurant market, with 20,000 eateries—will phase in a ban on trans fats in restaurant foods.

Kitchen R&D Costs

So some of the biggest brands in the industry are struggling to reformulate their recipes. After more than four years of tests in its labs and in the field, McDonald's (MCD) says it still hasn't hit on an oil without trans fats that doesn't make its french fries taste worse. Other chains are already in compliance. Wendy's International (WEN) last summer switched its frying vats over to a blend of soy and corn oils that is trans-fat-free. And on Jan. 3, Starbucks (SBUX) quit using trans fats in pastries in half of its 5,600 company-owned cafés in the U.S., including in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington.

KFC should beat the deadline, too. The subsidiary of Yum! Brands (YUM) says that it has removed trans fats from its fried foods in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Louisville. By May, the company has promised, all of its 5,500 U.S. locations will be using a newly developed frying oil that has no trans-fatty acids.

But coming up with this alternative, derived from a hybrid soybean, took much more time and money than KFC's food innovators and top executives had thought. Hasselo figures his 62-employee team has tested two dozen oils that do not contain trans fats, or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. They've also spent a third of every work week on the effort over 2½ years. Even so, they are still working on a substitute in KFC's biscuits and other baked goods. "Every oil interacts differently with every food," Dedrick notes. "To get everything right is not easy."

Unhealthy Bottom Line

While trace amounts of trans fats occur in meat and dairy products, the unsaturated fat did not become ubiquitous until after a German chemist patented a process called hydrogenation a century ago. Pumping hydrogen into vegetable oil changes the shape of fat molecules. If the mixing is thorough, the result is a substance almost as hard and stable as a brick. But if the transformation is only partial, the liquid turns to a semi-solid, like margarine or Crisco. Food processors came to prefer partially hydrogenated vegetable oils because they don't turn rancid as quickly as unadulterated oils, extending the shelf life of cooked or baked foods.

Fast-food restaurants were late converts to partially hydrogenated oils.