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New Fast-Food Restaurants Banned in South LA

City council members voted unanimously on Tuesday, July 22, to allow a proposal calling for a ban on new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area to be presented to the Los Angeles (LA) City Council for a decisive vote.  If passed, the ban on opening new fast-food restaurants will last one year, with the option for renewal twice, at six-month intervals.

Repeated medical tests have shown a connection between a diet heavy in fast foods and chronic medical conditions, such as obesity and diabetes.  The most dense concentration of fast-food restaurants in the area is South LA, where 30% of adult residents are obese, outweighing by far the county’s overall average of 21%.  Diabetes develops in greater numbers in South LA, too, with 11.7% of the population diagnosed with the disease.  The county average for diabetes is 8.1%

Of the 8,200 restaurants in LA, fast-food establishments are clustered more closely in South LA than in other parts of the city.  In South LA, 45% of all food establishments are fast-food eateries.  South LA is also where the concentration of grocery stores is the lowest.

While the definition of a limited menu needs some clarification before presentation to the city council, the proposal is winning favor across a wide audience.  The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency has begun offering incentives to grocers and full-service restaurants interested in setting up shop in the nutritionally challenged neighborhoods of South LA.

The California Restaurant Association lobbied against the ban in its initial stages but a spokesman for the industry association claims to be working with regulators as it awaits an official definition of fast food.  There is also a great deal of speculation as to the use of vacant lots throughout the area that were to be future sites of new fast-food restaurants.

Source: LA Times

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