Los Angeles city council issues fast-food ban for poor neighborhoods

The city of Los Angeles, CA, on July 29 approved its third landmark public-health rule in one week, adding a ban on new fast-food restaurants in poor neighborhoods to restrictions on plastic bags and trans fats. The fast-food restaurant ban, passed unanimously by the city council, is intended to entice healthier restaurants into the low-income area of south Los Angeles. Activists supporting the yearlong ban tout the new rule as an end to "food apartheid" and a fix for rising childhood obesity rates in the neighborhood. Nearly one-third of residents in the city's south are obese, compared with 19% for the overall Los Angeles area and 14% in the wealthier west side area. "There's one set of food for one part of the city, another set of food for another part of the city, and it's very stratified that way," Marqueece Harris-Dawson, a community leader in south Los Angeles, told the Washington Post this month. The restaurant industry strongly disagrees, however, arguing that a better solution would have involved discussing healthier eating options but not restricting the type of restaurants that can do business in the area. The California restaurant association is reportedly considering a legal challenge to the fast-food ban. Fast-food chains such as McDonalds have become ubiquitous in America's poor urban areas thanks in large part to their inexpensive meals, raising questions in Los Angeles about whether the new ban would hit low-income residents in the pocketbook. But the city carved out an exemption for lower-priced chains that make their food fresh to order without using a drive-through window, such as Subway. The city council's vote comes after a week of unprecedented action on public health issues in Los Angeles. The state of California began barring unhealthy trans fats from its restaurants last week, just as Los Angeles approved a ban on plastic carrier bags in shops.