For nearly 10 years now, I've been fiercely guarding my shopping cart. The wicked would-be interloper: partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, also known as trans fats or trans fatty acids. And it's in everything, from wheat bread to soup to my favorite sticky candy bars. For a while, I was a lone voice and a lone label-reader, inspecting in the wilderness of my grocery store aisles without another soul to fight against the cheap, shelf-stable, yet bad-for-your-heart fat.

In the past few years, a growing public backlash against the stuff, known to contribute to heart disease and obesity, has led to its removal from many major products, from Lay's chips to sandwich cookies. Most Trader Joe's products are now free of the substance (and thus, it's my favorite place to shop). And then, this month, came the New York City ban: no restaurants will be permitted to use trans-fatty acids in cooking oils come July, 2007 -- and trans fats will be banned entirely from all foods available in restaurants by July 2008. This week the Washington State Board of Health announced it was considering a similar ban throughout the northwestern state.

Should you join me and New York City's best (and not-so-best) restaurants? Should you ban trans-fatty acids from your pantry, too? I looked at a bunch of products in my local grocery store to evaluate whether they were worth banning and whether or not my budget could manage it.