Los Angeles Bans Fast Food

1. Brian
   September 4th, 2008 at 2:02 am

   I ate a lot of double cheese burgers when I lived there. LA is not cheap.

2. Peeves
   September 4th, 2008 at 4:51 am

   Housing equality is such a fascinating and complicated thing. The fact that so many fast food restaurants are popular is because of so many things including:

   1. Grocery prices today are very high compared to income. And it's common practice for grocery stores to not build in low income areas (see also: banks and check cashing places)
   2. Low income areas tend to have working residents that work more hours than average.
   3. The cycle is repeated for generations when school funding formulas are based on property taxes (this is a real killer).

   This, and much more than my feeble mind can know, is all to say that fast food eating is a symptom, not the disease. Banning or limiting the amount of chains won't hurt but this sort of effort would be much better in working towards the real causes of human decline.

3. Lasse
   September 4th, 2008 at 5:16 am

   What would Stalin do?

4. John Giotta
   September 4th, 2008 at 7:57 am

   So let me get this straight... poor people aren't allowed to eat fast food?

5. Bill
   September 4th, 2008 at 7:58 am

   Yeah for freedom!

6. Algonkin
   September 4th, 2008 at 8:46 am

   All I can say is....good luck counselor

7. Algonkin
   September 4th, 2008 at 8:50 am

   Ooops!I meant councilwoman

8. Senior Taco
   September 4th, 2008 at 9:04 am

   What a freekin shame that she is trying this in LA of all places.

   Los Angeles has the BEST FAST FOOD IN the USA!!!

   It really is better than anywhere else.

   Heck...just a humble "Del Taco" is usually better than the best taco available is sit down places in towns of 500,000.

9. 30frames
   September 4th, 2008 at 9:18 am

   I love that this is above the Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger post.

   I remember after R.J. Reynolds lost a huge case, their executives warned it would be fast food or sugary cereals that would be next.

   Not to say we should all start smoking. Of eating fast food.

10. JenDiggity
    September 4th, 2008 at 9:36 am

    Nice gesture, but what would really be something is if the government stopped pushing the agenda of the HUGE empire that values money over our health and REALLY made efforts to improve our health. But, then there'd be no more cheese. No more hydrogenated oils. No more dirty, artery clogging meat. And as a result, wayyy less disease. I don't see what it matters if the same ice cream and fried cheese that causes cancer (yes, it's true, ask any nutritional researcher who is not taking money from the dairy industry...the fact has been proven beyond any doubt) that you can get at a fast food place can also be purchased at a sit-down restaurant.

11. Goober
    September 4th, 2008 at 10:25 am

    This isn't a ban on fast food. It's a ban on *new* fast food places, in neighborhoods that already have significantly more fast food places per square mile than most of LA. It's a zoning decision, and nothing more.

    As usual, the press is hysterical and stupid.

12. sw
    September 4th, 2008 at 10:44 am

    the title is misleading. LA is not banning fast food outright, just the construction of new fast food joints in certain neighborhoods (which are pretty well saturated anyway, from the sound of things).

13. JChase11
    September 4th, 2008 at 10:45 am

    Low Income Neighborhoods absolutely need fast food restaurants. I lived out in San Diego for a couple years, and during that time I was broke! I relied on fast food restaurants to feed me. If they weren't in the low income areas, then they would have to count on cars/public transportation to get to the Bell or KFC, and with the gas crisis, well...its just not worth it. Who is she to tell us what to eat and what not to eat!

14. secret asian man
    September 4th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    So let me get this straight:

    Rich people get to eat what they want.

    Poor people get to eat whatever rich people allow them to.

    What happened to "all men are created equal"?

15. Neatoramawontsendmeapassword
    September 4th, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    It's "a ban on new fast-food restaurants". See that little three-letter word in there? NEW. Look it up. Nobody's banning fast food. At this point, I doubt it will make much difference anyway. People have already managed to make themselves obese with what's there now.

    Does anyone else find it disturbing that someone who works in the health care industry is promoting bad eating habits?

    '"It’s stupid. It’s our body, we choose what we put in it," Tonya Owens, a 45-year-old nurse assistant told Reuters.'

    Good grief.

16. frobish
    September 4th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    Before we can even discuss obesity, we should acknowledge that the Body Mass Index is, for many reasons, a highly inaccurate measure of fitness. First of all, it fails to take into accou

    Neatorama and Reuters are putting so much spin on this issue, you might as well decorate it with Hebrew letters and call it a dreid

    Great article!

17. frobish
    September 4th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    :-@

    (this just in: Neatorama Bans Strikethrough Text)

18. Jimbo
    September 4th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    Good! Now I ban Los Angeles!

19. pomokey
    September 4th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    Since when did we give the government the ability to regulate what we eat?

    The point of the government is to protect our rights, not take them away. Rights cannot be 'given' to you, but they can be taken away. You have rights simply because you exist, and the government is supposed to protect those rights.

    deciding what you want to eat, where you want to eat, and how you want to eat it are not things the government should be controlling. They can, however, inform you that what you're doing is detrimental to your health, and suggest that you stop it.

    Granted, in this case, they are just making a zoning law, but the points above are still valid, and our rights are slowly being violated.

20. Ant
    September 4th, 2008 at 6:22 pm

    Sheesh, leave them alone. If people want to eat junk food, then let them be!

21. stapler
    September 8th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

    So nobody thought of "Demolition Man" when they read this?

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