No more chicken and waffles!?

This kind of reminds me of "legislating morality"... and it should be about equally effective.

It's like prohibition for grease huh?

I never eat fast food and I managed to get fat for a while.
The only reason I lost weight is because I decided that I cared about my body, not because the government told me I should.
Being fat is a choice for a lot of people. If they don't want to put the effort into eating healthier and exercising then a ban on new fast food restaurants isn't going to help them.
Because you can buy plenty of unhealthy shit at the grocery store.

Yup, it was all down hill once we let them vote and sit where they like on the bus. We're really fucked if women get the right to vote.

Sheep need sheppards sadly.

lol like with prohibtion and the bath tub gin... americans will start making their own fatty, unhealthy food... hate to see how they are going to stop THAT!

From a "legislating health" side, I agree its a slippery slope.

...but from every other side (and there many, I think. it's not like a coin, more like a dodecahedron), I think it's a great idea. They're not demolishing existing fast food restaurants, right? They're not barring people from eating and working at the hundreds and hundreds of existing Fatburgers or LardLands or whatever.

It seems to me that this will create more opportunities for small (cheap) restaurants to open (which can only be a good thing from a community perspective, right?) and FEWER opportunities for the urban landscape to become further dotted with golden arches and that depressing signage Winchell's uses (why so much yellow!!? Unappetizing.)

Honestly, I eat fast food probably 5 times a week. I don't even own cutlery. For real. When I was a child, my favorite thing was being flown around (i.e. carried by my parents) in a cardboard box that I covered with drawings of FRENCH FRIES. Again, I am being serious. I am a pathetic, gross slob who loves me some McDonalds. And even *I* don't see the downside here.

I'm not saying legislation is the way to go, but there is some sense to the argument. Not only are poorer areas lacking in restaurants with healthier alternatives, they also often suffer from a dearth of conveniently located grocery outlets offering a wide variety of products. Hence, people in poorer communities, who often work long hours, are more likely to rely on fast food and small convenience chains like 7-11 that offer high-caloric, low-nutrient options. That problem is only compounded in LA, where (let's face it) it often takes bloody forever to drive anywhere, assuming you even have a car and don't rely on public transportation.

That being said, the proposed law obviously only addresses a symptom rather than the cause of a very difficult problem and the legislation would do nothing to combat the over-saturation of these junk food mongers already in place. So yeah, as you said, education and, well, eliminating poverty are probably better ways to fight the fat, but, to be fair, that does nothing to address how people in somewhat desperate straits are basically being taken advantage of.

Not that I have any better answer...

It’s just a discouragement tactic. They aren’t making fast food illegal, just reducing its convenience, it’s the same thing many governments have tried to do with cigarettes, pipes and cigar smokers.

They want the general populace to stop smoking/eating unhealthy food so they reduce the convenience and easy of use by banning smoking in a large number of areas and putting an age limit on cigarettes so apparently only people of a “responsible age” can get access to them. They’re pretty much just doing the same thing here only with fast food instead of tobacco, banning fast food restaurants in busy or popular areas appears to be the tactic and will decrease the consumption of fast food.

How are they defining "fast food" for the sake of the ban? Is the ban really on the speed the food is prepared at? I can slop out a ladle of healthy curry and brown rice faster than I can a burger and fries.

I agree that obesity is a problem and all of that jazz, but honestly, if people want to eat greasy fast food that we know aids growing waistlines, then they're gonna eat it. As long as they dont go for my deep fryer next. I loves me some homemade frenchfries. I like the idea of anti-greasy food ads, though. I mean, I'd rather they do that than "aid the transiton" of healthy food chains going in where greasy food chains would otherwise. Taxes are a bitch, especially for such a poor college kid as I.

Yeah, quit telling us we're going to kill children because we smoke pot and start telling us the truth by telling us we're going to kill ourselves because we eat grease sandwiches with pure-carb sticks and wash it down with a bucket of Coke.

Or, uh, don't.

I kind of wonder if the fast food owners got together and are trying put a cap on the fat food business.

of course, in 2 years Lard Lad restaurants will be everywhere.