I love California, but the fruits and nuts truly have taken control. The city of Los Angeles has initiated a moratorium on fast food restaurants–but only in poor neighborhoods–to iimprove the people’s health. Reports the Associated Press:
City officials are putting South Los Angeles on a diet.
The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city with a proliferation of such eateries and above average rates of obesity.
The yearlong moratorium is intended to give the city time to attract restaurants that serve healthier food. The action, which the mayor must still sign into law, is believed to be the first of its kind by a major city to protect public health.
In the city council’s view, too many residents of South Los Angeles are fat. But if people there prefer junk food, why do the city fathers (and mothers) believe tofu bars are going to rush in? Unless I missed something, none of the fast food restaurants were forcing people to eat there at gun point. The restaurants came because people wanted their food.
Of course, it’s probably dangerous to point this out. The next step for Los Angeles may be forcible round-ups of fat people and incarceration in reeducation camps to teach the wonders of dressing-free salads. It is California, after all.
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It’s also worth pointing out that the tofu bars are probably a bit above the price range of the fast food joints. While we D.C. yuppies may be able to plop down $13 for our masaman tofu, we shouldn’t force our expensive tastes on others.
A couple weeks ago there was some press about this. A buddy said no way will anything happen, just some city council nutt job getting attention. I disagreed. After all Chicago banned fraux graux [sic] and Wal-Mart. Looks like it is, if anything, gaining momentum.
This is one of the problems when you have the government instead of private organizations providing services. One of the core arguments is that it’s costing govt more to provide health care. It becomes an excuse to micromanage individual peoples lives.
I caught a story about this on NPR yesterday morning too. Maybe I misunderstood but it seemed that either some officials, or at least the reporter doing the story, simplified the situation to the point where they said that sit down meals were more healthy. Now I thought it was pretty clear that just because you sit down at Applebees, Macaroni Grille, or TGI Fridays that the food is often just as “bad for you” as the “fast food”. I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising when they’re simplifying an issue as complex as obesity along the age oldmis perception that skinny === healthy and that too much food === obese.
And does this mean that places like Chipotle can not open stores there? Are they “bad” fast food or good?