Posted on 08/13/2008 3:36:22 PM PDT by mojito
A NEW weapon in the battle against obesity was rolled out last month when the Los Angeles City Council decided to stop new fast food restaurants from opening in some of the citys poorest neighborhoods.
Even in a country where a third of the schoolchildren are overweight or obese, the yearlong moratorium raises questions about when eating one style of food stops being a personal choice and becomes a public health concern.
The Sisyphean struggle against poor diets has included booting soda from schools, banning trans fat and, more recently, sending New Yorkers into dietary sticker shock with a law that requires calorie counts be posted on menus, right next to the prices.
But this appears to be the first time a government has prohibited a specific style of restaurant for health, rather than aesthetic, reasons....
The moratoriums definition of a fast food business is any stand-alone restaurant that dispenses food, to stay or to go, and that has a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders, and food served in disposable wrapping or containers. It is up to the citys director of planning to decide which places fit that definition....
The councilwoman behind the moratorium, Jan Perry, says its intent is not to crush food choices, but to encourage variety and give residents more nutritious options. Making healthy decisions about food is difficult when people have small incomes, the grocery store is five miles away and a $1 cheeseburger is right around the corner, she and supporters of the ban say.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I’ll bet Michael Phelps could eat fast food for the next 4 years and still win 5 or 6 more gold medals in the 2012 Olympics.
Have they seen what the poor on assistance can buy at the grocery store....
This is crazy. Have you ever seen the “government-approved” meals in daycare centers and public schools? Carb and fat rich with filler-foods such as Mac’n Cheese, potatoes, etc. Coke and candy machines dot most campuses. Me thinks they need to rein themselves in first.
OOOOH, that’s a good one.
What would you give to see a nightly invasion of Rodeo Drive and Beverley Hills of folks from Watts and E. LA going to get a Big Mac or a Taco Bell alongside the ‘progressive’ citizens who are looking out for their health?
“The only thing I would add is that any and all unintended consequences resulting from this decisionlost jobs, higher prices at inner-city fast food franchises, etc.will be blamed on racism.
And the finger pointers will be right—it will be racism, but it will be the soft racism of those progressives of the left who think they have the right—nay the duty—to direct the lives of their less fortunate brothers and sisters.
It makes me want to puke.
Wouldn’t you agree that the hardest thing in the world is to provide full service restaurants selling ‘healthy’ foods at a price that poor people can afford?
That’s why there aren’t many in existence and the result is middle and upscale chain restaurants rather than restaurants for poor folks. I wonder where Obama got his craving for arugula in South Chicago?
I’m on a limited retirement budget myself and can’t go to many full service restaurants because of the prices so its either cook at home (for one person is expensive) or grab a $1.00 Big Mac, a couple of tacos, or a $2.50 box of chicken.
I think providing better security would provide better/more grocery stores, but a ‘surge’ of police on the ground strategy would cost money—while banning additional tacquerrias and Burger Kings doesn’t cost anything to the city. Unless you want to count lost jobs as a cost.
Periodic looting and burning of large chain stores leads inevitably to decisions by insurance companies and store executives to limit their exposure in dangerous neighborhoods prone to riots. It’s only the small entrepaneur who’s willing to take the risk and of course his stock will be limited and higher priced as a result.
This fast food moratorium is simply a ‘feel good’ strategy for liberals.
In other countries, the poor are starving.
America is so great, that our biggest problem is that the "poor" are too fat! God Bless America! Liberals have to invent crap to worry about to justify their existence.
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