New York ? Yes, said Toni Lewis, as she caught a quick dinner on the run at McDonald’s before her child’s piano lesson. Maybe New York City IS going too far telling people what they can and can’t put into their stomachs. But you know what?

“I welcome the intrusion,” she said. “This is New York. People eat out a lot. We don’t have a choice. We need someone to make it a healthier proposition.”

It was hard to find consumers who felt much differently in the hours leading up to Tuesday’s Board of Health vote to ban artificial trans fats in restaurants, the first such ban in the nation. It appeared that for many New Yorkers, health concerns trumped fears of a “nanny state,” of the food police, of Big Brother supervising our stomachs.

“I don’t care about what might be politically correct and what’s not,” said Murray Bader, nursing a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts on Tuesday morning. “I want to live longer!”

The 72-year-old Manhattan resident called the ban a “wakeup call” for a public often unaware of the risks of what they’re eating. “This stuff clogs up your vessels,” he said of the artificial fats. “I’m a borderline diabetic, and I want to keep it that way – borderline.”

Trans fats are believed harmful in a number of ways, contributing to heart disease, diabetes and cancer. One way they threaten the heart is by raising bad cholesterol and lowering the good kind. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, a common form of trans fats, is used for frying and baking and turns up in a host of processed foods: cookies, pizza dough, crackers and pre-made blends like pancake mix.

“It’s basically a slow form of poison,” says David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center. “I applaud New York City, and frankly, I think there should be a nationwide ban.”

Not everyone agrees with Katz – he’s gotten angry e-mails calling him and colleagues the “food police” and saying, “If I want to eat trans fats, that’s my inalienable right.” To which, he says, he responds: “Would you want the burden of asking your restaurant whether there’s lead in the food? Whether there’s arsenic in the bread? For all I know, maybe arsenic makes bread more crusty. But it’s poison.”

Some industry representatives were not happy with the ban. E. Charles Hunt, executive vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association, said the city had overstepped its authority by ordering restaurants to abandon an ingredient permitted by the FDA.

“This is a legal product,” he said. “They’re headed down a slippery slope here.”