Jennifer Medina, “In South Los Angeles, New Fast-Food Spots Get a ‘No, Thanks,’” The New York Times, January 15, 2011

This article focuses on the Los Angeles City Council’s unanimous decision last month to permanently extend a moratorium on new stand alone fast-food restaurants in South Los Angeles, where the city Department of Health estimates that 30 percent of the residents are obese. Although the ban allows exceptions for “mom-and-pop” businesses and shopping center eateries, it ultimately seeks to prevent additions to the 1,000 preexisting fast-food joints “in the 30 or square miles of South Los Angeles covered by the regulations.” According to Times writer Jennifer Medina, these rules “are meant to encourage healthier neighborhood dining options,” such as “sit-down restaurants, produce-filled grocery stores and takeout meals that center on salad rather than fries.”

But the move also represents the first time a city has prohibited new fast-food restaurants “as part of a public health effort,” raising questions about whether the approach will actually lower obesity, heart disease and diabetes rates within the district. While the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has already urged Detroit and other cities to take similar approaches, researchers like those at the RAND Corporation have issued more cautious responses addressing the prevalence of gas stations and convenience stores in these communities. “People get a lot more of their discretionary and unnecessary food from there than from a fast-food restaurant,” one RAND senior economist old Medina. “A lot of this is driven by sound bites overlooking what is actually going to have an impact. People talk about this area being a food desert, but it is more like swamp—you are literally drowning in food, but none of it is really a good option.”

Medina notes, however, that these reservations have met resistance from health advocates, who warn that finding the “perfect policy is futile” and who compare “the fight against junk food to the early efforts of antismoking activities.” As Rudd Center Director Kelly Brownell is quoted as saying, “There is something inevitable here—you get different things going in different places and it will just be a matter of time before it starts to have a cumulative effect. To intervene in any one part of the system and expect a significant result is just not possible.”