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L.A. OKs moratorium on fast-food restaurants
In bid to fight obesity, city imposes one-year ban in poor neighborhoods
LOS ANGELES — 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.
“Our communities have an extreme shortage of quality foods,” City Councilman Bernard Parks said.
Representatives of fast-food chains said they support the goal of better diets but believe they are being unfairly targeted. They say they already offer healthier food items on their menus.
“It’s not where you eat, it’s what you eat,” said Andrew Pudzer, president and chief executive of CKE Restaurants, parent company of Carl’s Jr. “We were willing to work with the city on that, but they obviously weren’t interested.”
The California Restaurant Association and its members will consider a legal challenge to the ordinance, spokesman Andrew Casana said.
Thirty percent of adults in South Los Angeles area are obese, compared to 19.1 percent for the metropolitan area and 14.1 percent for the affluent Westside, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
Research has shown that people will change eating habits when different foods are offered, but cost is a key factor in poor communities, said Kelly D. Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.
“Cheap, unhealthy food and lack of access to healthy food is a recipe for obesity,” Brownell said. “Diets improve when healthy food establishments enter these neighborhoods.”
A report by the Community Health Councils found 73 percent of South Los Angeles restaurants were fast food, compared to 42 percent in West Los Angeles.
South Los Angeles resident Curtis English acknowledged that fast food is loaded with calories and cholesterol. But since he’s unemployed and does not have a car, it serves as a cheap, convenient staple for him.
On Monday, he ate breakfast and lunch — a sausage burrito and double cheeseburger, respectively — at a McDonald’s a few blocks from home for just $2.39.
“I don’t think there’s too many fast food places,” he said. “People like it.”
Others welcomed an opportunity to get different kinds of food into their neighborhood.
Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25896233#.TyYoYoGwV4U
