And too bad it gave DD an excuse to raise prices once again.

I don't know about you guys, but usually, for regular doughnuts, the browner it looks, the older or overbaked it looks to me, which causes me to avoid them even more.

fat and happy.

Why not just use pure animal shortening?

forget regular customers, can police officers tell the difference?

@Hobo-NC: Too expensive probably.

"Keeping up with the Joneses"?? How about not slowly killing your customers. Geez.

Boy, the world is truly a screwed up place.
I understand the whole trans-fat thing if we were talking about anything even remotely healthy - but doughnuts?
Really?
I don't eat DD donuts anymore because they are always pre-made elsewhere and trucked in to the stores by me. They are almost always stale and taste like sugared cardboard.
But now that they are trans-fat free? Still not buying them.

@vanilla-fro:
Amen, my friend.

I miss Dunkin Donuts. :(
Krispy Kreme is a poor substitute.

So instead of trans fats, I'm getting more saturated fats. That's not an incentive for me to start buying the donuts.

I'm actually more of a salty snack person~ I prefer fried things to slowly kill me rather than doughnuts... Yahoo DD anyway :) I think...

I wonder what the caloric difference is? I'm sure it's astronomically high regardless, I'm just curious.

I'll bet you'll never see the caloric information on any of their menus anytime soon.

@Hobo-NC: because then it wouldn't be vegetarian and believe it or not, some of use look into that sort of stuff before eating out.

@Asvetic:

Most chain restaurants have "nutrition" information on their websites.

[www.dunkindonuts.com]

Trans fats are not "yummy", they are simply a cheap replacement for natural saturated fats.

It would not surprise me in the least if we find out that the rise in heart disease was caused by the rise in trans fat usage (margarine, crisco).

@theblackdog: Well given that saturated fat is in fact an essential nutrient and trans fat is a completely unhealthy and harmful ingredient, this seems like a good trade, no?

@swalve: Trans fats are certainly "yummier" than a lot of trans-free fats when used as donut shortening. I've tried donuts fried in a number of different palm blends, and they taste rancid compared to ones fried in a standard soy-cottonseed blend.

@alice_bunnie: Well, for the "Old Fashioned Cake Donut" it says 300 calories, 170 are from fat and it has 4 grams of Trans Fats.

[www.dunkindonuts.com]

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if they post the updated trans fat-free versions to see what the differences are.

@swalve: Trans fats are certainly "yummier" than many non-trans alternatives when used as donut shortening. I've tried donuts fried in a number of different palm blends (and animal blends!), and they're awful tasting compared to ones fried in a standard soy/cottonseed fat.

@Asvetic: As far as I know, there's not a huge caloric difference between the shortenings themselves. However, donuts absorb different amounts of different fats during frying. I would have to imagine, though, that one of the criteria in DD's search for a trans-free alternatives was a similar fat uptake. This leads me to believe that there probably isn't a huge difference in calories.

@azntg: I think they were saying that the oil itself is a darker color, not the finished product.

"Dunkin's research and development manager, Rick Golden, one of the few people in the know, slept with his cellphone by his pillow every night during the trial, waiting for someone to call with a doughnut crisis. No one did."

HAhahahahaha!!! What the heck would constitute as a doughnut crisis? I haven't bought a doughnut from DD in about 16 yrs.

@jeff303: Actually saturated fat isn't an essential nutrient. Your body would do just fine without it.

Taking out trans fat and adding saturated fat (from palm oil, one of the worst sources) is like replacing dogs who crap on your lawn with kids who pee on it; neither choice is better. Then again people eat donuts very well know that it's junk food.

Trans fats are only going to be yummier than regular fats if you're storing them for a long time. Trans fats are more shelf-stable. That's it. It's the same oil, with the same basic flavor profile. It's just solid at room temperature, and less likely to go rancid.

It's too bad that DD can't use peanut oil. Something tells me that those donuts would be fantastic.

Ron Paul ay..

@Hobo-NC: That would be saturated fat. Which is the reason commercial trans-fats were invented in the first place, to avoid saturated fat.

Back to the drawing board.

@lincolnparadox: Peanut oil would be ALLSOME, OMG. Maybe Chik-fil-a should start making donuts.

Hey- Is that the Dunkin' Donuts on Route 17 in Ramsey, NJ?? It's seriously scary that it's been over 12 years since I lived near there and I recognized it (assuming I'm right)...

"Dunkin's research and development manager, Rick Golden, one of the few people in the know, slept with his cellphone by his pillow every night during the trial, waiting for someone to call with a doughnut crisis."

That is so awesome, this dude is like Batman. Or Homer Simpson. Or maybe I should sleep with my cell phone next to my pillow so I wake up to a doughnut (donut?) crisis.

@Hobo-NC: A local ?donutery? near me does. The donuts are fried in 100% pure lard. They are the ugliest things you have ever seen, dark brown, mottled, and when you bite into them you can see a color change in the dough from the fat similar to how a sponge changes colors slightly when you wring it out. On the other hand, they're considered one of the best donuts in the country and they have consistently sold out of donuts no later than 8pm every day for 60 years.

@lockdog: make that 8am. And now I'm hungry for some donuts.

Thanks for continuing to find ways to ruin my pastries, health-nuts!

Seriously, though, for more than 150 years in this country, people cooked with pure lard. The secret? They actually got out and worked, exercised. Walked places.

You can't use lard now because of OMGlotsoffat. Companies spent a fortune moving from REAL cooking oil/fats to oils with trans-fat because the trans-fats were considered "healthier" and kept the same taste. Now they're spending a fortune moving from trans-fatty oils to vegetable oils. In another 20-30 years, we'll be telling them that they can't use ANY oils or serve ANY fried foods.

This is why, of course, local restaurants are slowly seeing an uptick in business. If you're running a local restaurant, you can cook with whatever you want - the majority of people don't CARE what the chef is cooking with, as long as the food tastes good. This is also why items such as the HamDog, Luther, and Denny's Beer Barrel Pub's MASSIVE burgers are on their menus - no matter how fattening or disgusting something may sound to *YOU*, someone else might enjoy eating it.

But then, this is the day where health nuts think they have some 'right' to tell us what we can or can't eat. Eventually, we'll have to fry chicken secretly in the basement because it will be illegal to serve anything but steamed vegetables.

Healthy fried food seems like a bit of an oxymoron. Instead of tinkering with the formulas to make their products comply to current health concern trends, they really should just post the calorie and fat information, and let the consumers make a choice.

Trans fat or no trans fat, a single donut is still going to have 30% your daily recommended allowance of saturated fat. Add a Coffee Coolata to the mix, and you've got your daily allowance filled. And it's not even 10 AM yet.

@MalcoveMagnesia: If I ran the place, they (the police) would be the majority of my test group. All kidding aside, they seem to make up a good portion of the local shop's clientele (or maybe they just sit there longer, after all, who's going to ask them to "move along"?).

@HungryGrrl: "Healthy fried food" is like "quick and courteous service" in most fast-food places (especially the big chains with the good locations).

@HungryGrrl: Actually, it appears like a lot of their donuts come in at less than 30% of your daily saturated fats. Some of the cake donuts are near that level, but a lot of the yeast raised are closer to 10%. Not that they're not still unhealthy.

@RvLeshrac: You know, you could follow your own advice and make your own fried foods (but I'd advise using the kitchen, not the basement). With the right tools and a bit of patience, you can stick it to them health busybodies and the corporate machine.