Los Angeles To Force Residents To Eat Healthier By Banning Bad Food
September 5, 2008
Yes. It’s true. The city of Los Angeles is going to try to pass a bill that basically forces people to be healthy – or at least to think about it before they make unhealthy choices.This bill is two-fold:
First, LA is proposing to make it mandatory for restaurants to list calories on the menu. They want to make all restaurants, including fast food places provide that information. They must be misguided enough to think that people will actually stop eating things that are bad for them, calorie-wise. Do you really think so? Health warnings have been on packs of cigarettes for years, but you don’t see smokers panicking about that. It is doubtful they even read that stuff. The restaurant calorie requirements will likely have much the same effect. You can still get that big, greasy, oversized burger, no problem. Now you’ll just be reminded that it’s a full day’s worth of calories for someone your size. You want fries with that?
Second, the city is proposing banning fast food entirely in poor neighborhoods. There are a couple of reasons they could be doing this. It might be because they’ve figured out that the people in these neighborhoods are, well…poor, and they wouldn’t be able to buy the food anyway, thus cheating the city out of the tax revenue from a thriving business. That’s one theory. But it’s more likely that the city is doing it because they think that poor people are already pretty unhealthy and don’t have health insurance if they do get sick, so they don’t want to give them ‘bad’ food within walking distance. It’ll only make the situation worse, and it’s probably the only ‘restaurants’ that they can afford.
Naturally, there are pros and cons to both of these things. Sure, it’s done under the guise of trying to help people and make them healthier. If there’s one thing that’s been pretty obvious throughout humanity, though, it’s that most people don’t want someone else’s ‘help’ when it means that they’re being told what to do. A lot of folks don’t take too well to that. Plus, it seems discriminatory. A lot of the poorer LA neighborhoods are comprised mostly of minorities…so is it racist that they can’t get a cheeseburger? Is the city of Los Angeles partaking in class-ism by only allowing the middle class and elite to purchase fast food while the less fortunate are denied? It would seem so.
According to the city of Los Angeles, the goal is to combat the rising tide of obesity. But how fat is LA, really? Isn’t that where all the beautiful people live? According to a 2005 study, about 30% of the children in LA County are overweight. The same is believed to be true of the rest of the United States as well. Finding out how many adults are overweight, though, and how many of them are poor (and therefore assumed to be living off of fast food) is a bit trickier. Estimates of the overweight and obese population within the USA range from around 35% to upwards of 60%. Certainly both of those can’t be true.
The issue, though, isn’t really whether someone is fat. Or whether there should be calorie declarations on menus so you know what you’re eating. Or whether poor people should have fast food restaurants. The issue is about the control that the government has over people and what used to be their choices, and whether there’s a bit too much of it. It’s worth paying attention to in LA, because it just might set the precedent for the rest of the country.
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