Healthful eating: Dine in New York and give soup pot an ice bath.

Byline: FOOD DUDE By Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

Food Dude is no great supporter of chemically modified food ingredients that raise your cholesterol, but I think New York City's latest efforts to control the obesity epidemic by banning trans fats is just about the silliest idea since the vibrating weight belt.

I've been to Manhattan and, trust me, they've got bigger dietary concerns than trans fats.

I can still recall the time I asked for a fruit smoothie in a diner. I watched in horror as the guy behind the counter dumped whole milk, a half pint of ice cream and three frozen strawberries in a blender, then charged me $7.

If that's a smoothie, what's a milkshake?

Friend of Food Dude had a similar experience. She ordered granola and got two broken Nature Valley bars in a bowl with a side of milk.

The idea that pulling trans fats would somehow make Gotham City food more healthful is ridiculous. It's like McDonald's saying the company is going to cut calories by removing the sesame seeds from its hamburger buns.

I think New York should just forget about trying to make people lose weight and focus on doing what it does best: 6-inch-thick pastrami sandwiches on rye, everything bagels and 24-hour diner food with no nutritional value.

If you've got a question or a comment or something to say about food, say it to the address at the end of the column.

Dear Food Dude: What's the best way to store a pot of soup? When I put it in the fridge, it sweats all over itself, but I'm worried about leaving it out too long to cool. What should I do?

- Soup Fan

Dear Soup Fan: You're right to be concerned about this issue, says Mark Stern, owner of Carte Blanche Soup Cart and Caterers.

"The danger zone is between 40 degrees and 140 degrees," says Stern, who explains that food needs to be either cooled or heated within two hours of cooking.

Although '80s heart throb Kenny Loggins once sang fondly of the "Danger Zone," this isn't a place you or your copilot Goose want to be. Bacteria is happiest in this temperature range, which means you're opening yourself up to potential food poisoning if you don't cool that soup down fast. That's what happened to a party of eight who ate shrimp creole at a Wisconsin restaurant and suffered diarrhea and cramping. The health department traced the problem to the restaurant's cooling methods. They found soup in a walk-in cooler that registered 65 degrees more than 17 hours after cooking.

Yuck. Makes Food Dude feel ill just thinking about it.

To avoid even the suggestion of food poisoning, Stern says it's a good idea to cool that soup in an ice bath. Place the pot in a bath containing half ice and half water. The ice should be at the same level as the food in the pot. Stir the food frequently.

If you're using a large pot, it's a good idea to transfer it to smaller, more shallow containers. You also can use an ice-filled plastic device called an ice wand to stir the food.

"Basically, you're stopping the cooking process in its tracks," Stern says.

If avoiding gastrointestinal sickness isn't a good enough reason for you, cooling also preserves the flavor of the soup.

It should be easy enough to tell when you've properly cooled the soup, but Stern says it's not a bad idea to invest in a thermometer just to be safe. The cooled soup can then be transfered to the refrigerator in a covered container.

One other thing that's worth mentioning is the fact that once soup's gone bad, there's no going back. No amount of heating or boiling will rescue that pot of sour stew. So, if you place a pot of hot covered soup in the fridge and then open it the following morning to find something that smells like your kitchen trash can, it's a good idea to follow your instincts and pitch it.

Talk to the Food Dude at www.registerguard.com/blogs/index.php/fooddude. Or, send mail to Food Dude, The Register Guard, P.O. Box 10188, Eugene, OR 97440-2168.