LA City Council Thinks Poor People Are Too Dumb to Make Food Choices
Better hold on to your burger: The nanny state is coming to rip that Whopper outta your hands. Begone, fatty fries! Chase away that chicken sandwich that, well, happens to be skinless and grilled, but could have a smear of mayonnaise on the bun. After all, there’s a chance that consumers may be too dumb to hold that mayo, or to sub a side salad for the salty fries.
But even if you think that a government has a right to regulate healthy choices for its citizens, this might vanilla-shake you right out of that nanny state mentality.
Here in Los Angeles, the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee pushed forward a proposal by Councilwoman Jan Perry to ban new fast-food restaurants. Not on the tony Westside, mind you, or even the solidly middle-class Valley.
No, the bureaucratic schoolmarms that be are just targeting South Los Angeles with the ordinance.
Because the nanny state says poor people are evidently too dumb to pick food for themselves.
“We have a serious problem in my district with fast-food restaurants and the increasing level of obesity and diabetes,” Perry told the committee last week.
Never mind that the obesity could have something to do with the fact that it’s not safe for kids to run and play in gang-choked streets. It’s also a fact that low-income families can hardly feed the kids off the Whole Foods market deli and still be able to pay the rent. Fast-food joints, in addition to offering more healthy choices than ever before, also have these
things called dollar menus that have helped fill the tummies of college students and the homeless alike.
So are they saying that springing for the steak, potato, cheesy toast and all-you-can-eat salad bar at the Sizzler is healthier than the roasted chicken at KFC? Of course, the next step would be to go through salad bars and ban creamy dressings, cheese and bacon crumbles, because those poor people tempted to slop on the thousand island need a slap across the knuckles with a legislative ruler!
It’s this nanny mentality with lower-income regions that keeps residents under the thumb of the government. When government tells people enough times that they know best how to run their lives, the reliance can become as addictive as a frothy fountain of Diet Coke. (Diet, yes, but who can tell if the council won’t come after south Angelenos for consuming too much caffeine or useless additives?)
To see that L.A. is considering an ordinance that selectively targets one neighborhood and its demographic to take away food options — under a vague guise of thereby offering more options from businesses that, um, aren’t there yet — is highly insulting to the region’s residents (and to this Inglewood native).
Especially considering what South Los Angeles really needs: self-sustenance.
After the Rodney King riots tore apart much of South Los Angeles, former Lakers star Magic Johnson saw opportunities for residents to become franchise owners, to run businesses and build neighborhoods that would really pay off in the long run.
In 1998, Johnson entered into the first franchise partnership with Starbucks, known as Urban Coffee Opportunities. His Johnson Development Corporation had opened a cineplex that now employs 300 young people in Crenshaw three years earlier, showing that if business gave the inner city a chance the region would respond in kind.
Magic’s corporation has also partnered with TGI Friday’s in developing urban retail and dining hubs, and partnered with Washington Mutual to expand urban home ownership with a program geared toward local loans and education about everything from banking basics to buying a house. He’s spread the same vision to other neglected urban areas crushed under the nanny state.
Of course, the council could next decide that the buttery topping on the popcorn at Magic’s theater makes minorities fat, that the Cinnabon cheesecake at Friday’s doesn’t do the community any favors, that the frapalattetinos at his Starbucks franchises contribute to obesity. Where will it end?
The key to helping lower-income neighborhoods is not limiting development, or telling time- and cash-strapped families that they shouldn’t or can’t buy fast, affordable meals. If you take out the take-out, will higher-end, sit-down restaurants really move in to take their place? Will the Grand Slam really contribute to public wellness better than the Breakfast Jack?
Want to improve the health of your community? Don’t kill business opportunities. Leave it to private enterprise instead of government regulation. Let the residents become self-reliant instead of relying on government to determine what’s best for the community.
And then, the nanny state becomes leaner and weaker, while the community feasts on the fruits of its labor.
Chew on that, City Council.
Bridget Johnson is a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News.
I just sent Ms. Perry an e-mail with a link to this article. I asked her: What will happen next? Will you send inspectors into people’s homes to see what’s on their plates?? I told her that it would be a good idea for school kids to be educated about making healthy food choices. But I also said: What’s wrong with having french fries once or twice a week. I’m sure you do! I wonder if I’ll get a response.
Yeah, starve em out. That’s just the ticket. Take away their sources of cheap, convenient food.
First they came for the grocery stores, then they came for the fast food.
What a wonderful idea. Pure genius.
I simply can not express enough support for this. Finally, after 5 generations on welfare, these ‘poor’ people who have become bloated fat ticks unsurrpassed and the real draw to the 3rd & 4th world country INVADERS are being told, ” no more fat food for you!”. Nanny state? HA! If these people don’t like being told what to eat, then let them be productive members of the society upon which they feast. Then they can go get a Mcbarfle burger. ( not eating that garbage is hardly a punishment from a nutritional stand point) While they are in the mood to put an end to the self perpetuating dependancy, albeit totaly unintentional, how about mandatory birth control implants and required daily exercise ratified with the never ending struggle to speak English and thus become literate? Spare me the misguided notions of the appointeted powers that be, they will always pander to these sorts for the very reason that once dependeant upon the state, it owns you. Imagine the shock to the ruling liberal elites of most high when they find that the peasants have only the interests of themselves and inturn bite the very hand that has fed them all this time. I wonder if boxer & feintien taste like chicken mcnuggets……
This will really cause alot of anger in these communities. It will however be misdirected, they will not hold their elected officals or themselves to blame for this sorry state of affairs. No, they will blame white people and this anger will sit there and fester. Then somewhere down the line something will happen and bang we will have another riot. They will of course burn down their own homes and what businesses that are still left. Afterwards these same lefty libs that are in charge will scratch their heads and try to “fix” the problems with the same old ideas that never work.
Does anyone care to bet against me?
I am so sick of this.
If they really want to crack down on obesity, why do they go about it so round about by banning trans fats, soda, and fast food? Why not just tax fat people more than healthy people? Why do they have to punish everyone for the sins of a few?
Oh yeah, I suppose because that would be discriminatory…
SDB,
I most certainly do.
State of mind has NOTHING to do with color.
Making it into a race issue, which you just attempted to do, rather than an ethical one is just what the divionists ordered. You better check your own heart there pal.
“The LA City Council is moving ahead with a plan to ban fast-food restaurants”
Nice misleading lede there. As the article makes clear, the proposed ban is on new fast-food restaurants. Perhaps the City Council has started to question whether a hypothetical city block that already houses a McDonald’s, a Burger King, a Taco Bell, a Subway, and a KFC really also needs a Wendy’s and a Popeye’s as well.
“considering what South Los Angeles really needs: self-sustenance[sic]”
And allowing corporate behemoths to install even more grease-and-corn-syrup outlets in neighborhoods that don’t need them, and maybe don’t even particularly want them, would encourage this how?
Why not just tax fat people more than healthy people?
Fat and healthy are not mutually exclusive.
really also needs a Wendy’s and a Popeye’s as well. Actually, yeah, they do. Stuff on the Wendy’s menu is better for you than stuff on the Taco Bell menu–why do you want to take these choices away from people? Hrm?
southdakotaboy:
Actually, I think that’s probably the driving force behind stupid schemes like this. You can’t be “champions of the oppressed” without making sure you have plenty of oppressed people to champion.
And stuff on the Subway menu is better than either. So what’s your point, Heather?
Ms Parry is a good example of what Hillary Care would resemble.
Did any of you read the ordinance?
1) It is an interim ordinance. It is a temporary hold on permitting new fast food restaurants in a particular area. The stated purpose is to allow time for city planners to complete a study.
2) The proponents of the measure on the city council (Perry and Parks) represent the districts in question. If this measure is opposed by the people of those districts they can vote them out.
3) The primary opposition to this proposal comes for outside the districts in question.
4) These areas have few choices in grocery stores. These stores offer fewer healthy options and the produce is of lower quality and higher price than in more affluent communities. (When your target audience relies on public transit you can better gouge them.)
5) Perry and Parks are attempting to attract more grocery stores and sit down restaurants to the area in the alloted time.
I don’t know that the ordinance will have any practical positive effects, but delaying the permitting of some fast food restaurants in the districts with the highest concentration of fast food restaurants in the city will have little if any negative impact.
Magic’s willingness to invest were others would not has done considerable good in attracting and building businesses and other opportunities to these neighborhoods.
Considering how many anorexic skeletal women walking around the streets of Manhattan these days, so skinny they look like they have tape worm or something, the Big Apple could use a couple of fast food resturants.
It’s one thing to see the ‘thin’ image on screen since the screen adds ten pounds to the image but it’s freaky to see it live and in person; it’s so creepy I rather look at a fat person than to look a a female whose leg size is smaller than her wrist size.
Gee Dark Helmet, the city council singles out minority communities for this law. Isn’t that just alittle racist on the part of the city council? And I’m fairly sure that the average voter in these areas isn’t going to suddenly sit up and say to themselves ” Wow this is my fault for voting these people in” let alone the average non voting resident. And do you really think for a moment that there isn’t some community “leader” out there right now saying that this is white racism. Having Jesse Jackson and The Reverend Al blame us for everything under the sun makes me expect the worst. Sorry if you don’t like that, but that is the way I feel.
Like training rats to follow their nose to the cheese, these city officials are doing their best to ‘guide’ their dumber (sorry ‘poorer’) constituents to healthier food outlets. I think it’s a terrific idea that should be intituted nation-wide. ‘Don’t know when enough is enough? Too stupid to know healthy from crap? We’re here to help!’ (ie. the government). To pay for this program fast-food is simply taxed higher… doesn’t effect people woh don’t eat the crap! I’m sick of my tax-dollars going to other people’s health problems.
Minority council members propose temporary legislation for their own communities and you find it racist?
Apparently there are not. You have quite the fevered imagination.
or they just want those healthier options to be available to their constituents.
SDB,
Thnak you for your response. Allow me….
Race has nothing to do with this.
It never has.
It is a matter of personal responsibility.
Understanding that removes the barriers.
Agitators have no place when there is no race.
You will be able to see that when you let go of your own racism.
First you have to be able to admit you have that in your own personality. Then you have to be willing to change it and always remember that it’s there. And…. do that regardless of what anyone else does.
After which time, you will find it easier and easier to see things in a non racial view that are historically treated as such. It focuses the bigger picture dramatically
You will come to realize that the very things that are demanded to be seen and accepted as being different are what divides all of us rather than unites.
Here is a easy way to start on that path. Pay attention to every time that someone uses a hyponated American description of themselves. It is the cornerstone of ‘PC’ speak.
For example, ‘African American’. Compare that to ‘American who happens to be black.’ Now which of those 2 is diviseive and which one is inclusive and unifying? In terms of descriptive reasoning, black is complete. So is white or asian. The rest are varied mixtures, at least from a dna stand.
By confronting the notion that one is something else before being an American, you remove the division that is the very power base of those who seek to exploit that misconception and use that for personal gain. Being racsist is wrong, discrininating against, or for, a behavior is not. You, as an American, have a right to have an opinion about the choices that others make.
To follow your example, what would the reaction be if your example of jesse jackson showed up shouting “We are all Americans and we all have a responsibility to pull our own weight!” ?…..
Rights come from being Americans, that’s it. Rights come with responsibilities as well. Race has nothing to do with that. It did, it’s done and the only way to get past that is to rid the world of one less racist.
The only one you can do something about is the one in the mirror.
The rest you have to encourage and understand that people will only deal with something when they are ready to.
But never let it go by without being pointed out. That goes for race, religion what ever.
Now for those out there who demand to be recognized for the heritage, then stick to the facts. A continent does not a race make, neither does your choice in religion. When was the last time you heard of someone in the media being referred to as a Catholic American?
Now the center of the story is about others making choices for others ‘for thier own good’.
Everyone who is in a position to make choices should be able to do so.
You have the right to eat where ever you want. No one under law is denied entry as long as a base line of behavior is followed, you have enough $, you don’t engage in activities that the owners find disruptive to the establishment and your personal appearance is in sync with the esatblishment. Race is not a factor in that.
You have a responsibility to eat as healthy as you can. If no one ate crap, there would’nt be any crap stands.
If you want to take back our America, then stop letting them divide it. But it means that you have to be able to recognize that racism does not discriminate. Elitism does and that’s were the power to do so comes from
SDB,
I meant to say ‘thank you’ not thnak you. I’m afraid my ethnic publik skool edjumication is showin’.
This decision by the L.A. City Council is ridiculous. Have they forgotten what the liberal spin on the cause of the ’92 riots was? No jobs in the bad parts of town?
What are they going to do with all of the Fat Burgers that Magic Johnson set up in 77th and Southwest Division? Shut them down?
What about the Starbucks that Magic set up? Will they shut that down too? Or is that considered “health food”? L.A. has the dumbest government of any city in the world.
Former LAPD,
Perhaps you should actually read the legislation you are commenting on, or at the very least the previous comments. No restaurants will be shut down.