The neighborhood of South Los Angeles, in an effort to take a bite out of obesity, is considering a moratorium to ban new fast food restaurants from opening for one year.

While obesity is a problem in America, (hovering around 33% in adult men, according to CDC) stopping new fast food restaurants is hardly the solution. Here we have another case of government babying its citizens in an effort to make them be better people. Unfortunately, I think we’ve all experienced on a personal basis that it is literally impossible to make someone be a better person and lead a better lifestyle. They have to choose to it themselves.

Furthermore, this well-intended policy has huge potential for negative ramification. First, how are they going to make a definition of what ‘fast food’ is? The article linked does not specify what ‘fast food’ will be defined as, but no matter the criteria, there will be exceptions where new restaurant that is considered fast food could be perfectly healthy.

The article says that the moratorium is intended to give the city time to find and attract healthier food options to the area. What the council members are failing to look at are the economic reasons that healthier food options weren’t naturally flourishing in the city in the first place. Not to mention that this policy with its criteria of what fast food is and isn’t, will create more needless red tape for new businesses to start in the area, fast food or not.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 16:47 by Sean Jin and is filed under Blowing Stuff Up, National. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.