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The Burger Buck Stops Here
Lots of back-and-forth about the Los Angeles moratorium on new fast-food restaurants. If you’ve missed the scuffle, the New York Times has a good summation of it. Basically, the Los Angeles City Council has decided to ban new fast-food restaurants from opening in certain low-income neighborhoods for one year. More than 45 percent of the 900 restaurants in these neighborhoods, says the Times article, are fast-food chains. And, the city council reasons, that’s led to a rash of obesity and accompanying health problems.
For the purposes of the moratorium, a fast-food restaurant is defined as “any establishment which dispenses food for consumption on or off the premises, and which has the following characteristics: a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders and food served in disposable wrapping or containers.”
William Saletan in Slate argues that the law treats poor people like children. In a riposte, Slate’s Amaka Maduka writes that “it’s deliberately ignorant to suggest that poorer neighborhoods currently have real choices in what they eat.” But Saletan comes back by noting that the law limits choices, it doesn’t expand them. The New York Times article fears that some healthy food choices might get caught in the law’s squishy verbiage, citing as an example a hot dog vendor who offers pasture-raised meat with fresh grilled onions. And an editorial in the Los Angeles Times says, “The real health problems in South L.A. are the result of long-standing food preferences influenced by culture, pocketbook imperatives and the dearth of supermarkets in the community that offer healthy, affordable produce.”
The idea of fast-food moratoriums seems to be appealing to politicians. Support is growing for a similar bill in New York, and San Jose, California, just formed a committee to study a version of the bill, which might also ban new fast-food places being built within 1,000 feet of schools.
Not surprisingly, the National Restaurant Association opposes such bans.
Posted by | Monday, August 18, 2008 at 10:49am | 19 comments
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One one hand we have Obama telling us that other countries need to approve of what we eat. Now, we have local governments telling us what kind of food we have access to--fast food, trans-fats (what's next?).
If you like Chow, alarms should be going off all around.
Hopefully, the next development will be a government that functions at all levels to insure people of all socioeconomic levels have access to a wide range of foods to choose from. This is an important public debate going on, and everyone should be encouraged to get involved.
Fearful reactionaries who make exaggerated and hysterical, (in every sense) and alarmist claims like that above are presenting an illogical straw man to sway public opinion towards their ideological bias. At issue is the currently existing lack of choice in low-income neighborhoods. We need to address this real problem carefully - rather than speculating that Obama wants to steal your sidemeat sammich, BeenThere...
Few Americans want to live in your totalitarian socialist paradise, trentyzan.
No. Few Americans are so ignorant as to fall into your logical fallacies. You foolishly extrapolate an End Times scenario from a simple bit of political rhetoric because you are riddled with such shrieking, hysterical paranoia.
I've merely suggested open, democratic (small D) debate. To which you've obtusely overreacted by again leaping to un-American, partisan ideological name-calling. Clearly, you're the totalitarian who fearfully recoils from civil discourse.
And you're a stalker who checks my posting history so you can answer month-old posts because you don't like what I said about another subject.
Please, find a productive use of your time.
No, you're the pathetic obsessive who interprets every subject according to the same illogical, meandering delusions month upon month. Not single-issue, you fail at simple thought.
I addressed another of your cookie-cutter rants in a separate post. I suggest you try making constructive comments that address existing problems that the working poor of this country experience.
Instead, you have chosen to selfishly declare your ignorance by screaming out your fear that somehow your future dining privilieges could be delimited. You do not speak for America, such arrogant presumption is not useful even to yourself.
Sweetie, stalkers look in the history of posters, then go back to month-old posts and try to reignite a debate with the person they are stalking.
I'm done indulging you. Get help.
Your precious words do not flatter me, anyone else, and least of all yourself. Debate would require you to engage in civil discourse, which you utterly fail to.
Frantically burying your intellectual inadequacy with homophilic rhetoric simply deepens readers embarrassment at your foolish, shrill protest.
You're a guy? My mistake and my apology.
In that case, replace "Sweetie" with "Son".
Replacing your incipient homophobic rhetoric with patronistic, condescending blather only further convinces everyone of your complete failure to speak with a modicum of intellect.
Whether your use of "Son" is intended as a racist epithet or a slur against what you foolishly presume to be my age, it confirms yet again that you are an utter fool.
However I do accept your apology and concession: You may now return to your Minneapolis airport bathroom and resume the toe-tapping hijinx.
First I was supposed to know your gender. Then I was supposed to know your race.
Let's simplify this. In the future, I'll just refer to you as "Stalker" and we'll be done with it.
Again, you miss the point - I never expected you to know anything as you display no intelligence.
What you've done in every instance is show all readers your bigoted, semi-literate prejudice:
1) You presumed I was female and called me "Sweetie" to prove you are a sexist moron.
2) You assumed I was either Black or young by calling me "Son" to prove that you are a racist and ageist.
Please do not stop posting here. More people need to be drawn to this thread and see your seeming endless displays of stupid hatred against every race, gender, age and sexual orientation.
I want everyone to know you for what you are: a puerile, incoherent fool who hates the majority of the country that he delusionally thinks he speaks for.
"1) You presumed I was female and called me "Sweetie" to prove you are a sexist moron."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juy9Nw...
I guess Stalker won't be voting for Sen. Obama!
You have thus confirmed your ideological bias, on top of your sexism, racism, ageism and homophobia.
Please do continue, and do not stop your fey, half-sincere flattery. It belies your obviously conflicted sexual orientation.
You might have more luck working out the contradictions of your gender identity in a "casual encounters" forum, but it's highly amusing to see you raging hysterically here.
If Chow has an hallucinogens forum, I suspect you'll be spending lots of time there, Stalker!
The most hilarious thing about you is that you seem to love to go online so that you can persistently fantasize about being stalked by men that you do not know.
What is sad about your pathetic delusional state is that you seek to hijack civil public discourse in a country with an epidemic of childhood obesity.
You are such a narcissistic tool that rather than address a real problem, you bleat out your schizoid fear that Obama is colluding with Foreign powers to burgle your brisket.
Please take your meds, BeenThere, and I promise I will not tell your wife about your dreams of being stalked by men.
"Again, you miss the point - I never expected you to know anything as you display no intelligence.
What you've done in every instance is show all readers your bigoted, semi-literate prejudice:
1) You presumed I was female and called me "Sweetie" to prove you are a sexist moron.
2) You assumed I was either Black or young by calling me "Son" to prove that you are a racist and ageist.
Please do not stop posting here. More people need to be drawn to this thread and see your seeming endless displays of stupid hatred against every race, gender, age and sexual orientation.
I want everyone to know you for what you are: a puerile, incoherent fool who hates the majority of the country that he delusionally thinks he speaks for."
Trentyzan, you're completely correct, albeit somewhat over-sensitive. Therefore, why would you continue this flame thread? Surely someone of your intelligence realizes that you will effect nothing by responding to BeenThere. Let's turn our flames back to our food and away from each other, guys.
"Again, you miss the point - I never expected you to know anything as you display no intelligence.
What you've done in every instance is show all readers your bigoted, semi-literate prejudice:
1) You presumed I was female and called me "Sweetie" to prove you are a sexist moron.
2) You assumed I was either Black or young by calling me "Son" to prove that you are a racist and ageist.
Please do not stop posting here. More people need to be drawn to this thread and see your seeming endless displays of stupid hatred against every race, gender, age and sexual orientation.
I want everyone to know you for what you are: a puerile, incoherent fool who hates the majority of the country that he delusionally thinks he speaks for."
Trentyzan, you're completely correct, albeit somewhat over-sensitive. Therefore, why would you continue this flame thread? Surely someone of your intelligence realizes that you will effect nothing by responding to BeenThere. Let's turn our flames back to our food and away from each other, guys.
Check your meds, elapointe. You're repeating yourself.