| Friday, September 5, 2008 |
15:54 - U NO CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0343855220080903?feedType=RSS&feedName=t
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Lovely.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A ban on new fast-food restaurants in poor Los Angeles neighborhoods has made headlines around the world, but residents say they don't plan to give up their cheeseburgers, fried chicken and tacos anytime soon.
The moratorium, which was passed in July, was intended to fight obesity in low-income communities of America's second-largest city where healthy food is hard to find.
The move is trend-setting California's latest salvo in an expanding war on the fast-food industry, which is bracing for copycat maneuvers around the United States that could threaten growth.
But residents are skeptical that such laws will have much impact in Los Angeles' low-income and minority neighborhoods, which are already blanketed with cheap and easy-to-find meals at chains such as McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and Domino's Pizza.
"It's stupid. It's our body, we choose what we put in it," Tonya Owens, a 45-year-old nurse assistant told Reuters.
But it's for your own good. Ungrateful poor people!
I'll say again, though: maybe red and yellow scare you, maybe you don't like clowns, maybe plastic chairs make you itch. But a Big Mac has 540 calories. That's not very much. Especially compared to this, or even just a Double-Double at In-N-Out, which would be the last thing in the world any proud Californian would boycott or ban from opening in his hometown. What's the difference? That McDonald's hasn't been humiliated and browbeaten into enough concessions to pallid chicken wraps and nonfat yogurt parfaits? That In-N-Out, with its cookie-cutter store plans and un-PC Bible verses printed on paper cups and faux 40s nostalgia wall art, is somehow more "pure"? Or that the trend simply hasn't caught up to it yet?
I tell you, I dread that day. Because some hope remains as long as In-N-Out remains open.
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Brian Tiemann
