Have It Your My Way

Think about the last time that you visited a restaurant or perhaps a fast-food joint. Did you decide to go there on your own, or were you lured there by some supernatural force that said, “Come hither”? Did you find yourself with hunger pangs and figured that you shouldn’t or couldn’t make your own dinner, thus resulting in having to dine at the nearest food establishment? Did you find this happening on a daily basis? Did you find that your waistline was getting bigger and bigger?

If you live in Los Angeles, you can blame the fast-food joints themselves. Why can you blame them and not yourselves? Well, the politicians in South L.A. have said so. Their reasoning is that residents of the poverty-stricken area aren’t able to think for themselves and since the area is chock full of fast-food places, they don’t know any better than to eat at them.

AP reporter Christina Hoag explains:

In the impoverished neighborhood of South Los Angeles, fast food is the easiest cuisine to find—and that’s a problem for elected officials who see it as an unhealthy source of calories and cholesterol.

The City Council was poised to vote Tuesday on a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a swath of the city where a proliferation of such eateries goes hand-in-hand with obesity.

“Our communities have an extreme shortage of quality foods,” City Councilman Bernard Parks said.

The aim of the yearlong moratorium, which was approved last week in committee, is to give the city time to try to attract restaurants that serve healthier food.

The California Restaurant Association says the moratorium, which could be extended up to two years, is misguided.

Fast food “is the only industry that wants to be in South LA,” said association spokesman Andrew Casana. “Sit-down restaurants don’t want to go in. If they did, they’d be there. This moratorium isn’t going to help them relocate.”

Would You Like Arrogance with That Shake?
To be quite honest, I don’t enjoy eating at sit-down restaurants and I absolutely loathe fast food. I prepare 99 percent of my meals and make sure that they’re as high-quality as possible. What’s nice is that you can have healthy food and still not worry about it breaking your wallet. For example, making a hearty homemade vegetable soup is easy and cheap; pick up some frozen vegetables, brown rice, and pre-made vegetable broth and you can make enough to have for two or three days.

With that said, I’m in full agreement with the California Restaurant Association. Not only because sit-down restaurants are exercising their freedom of choice to not locate there (and yes, the term “choice” can be used in areas other than abortion), but because of a fact about which the city council is apparently clueless: The neighborhood residents are the ones who have made the fast-food joints successful.

To put it another way, if the folks in South Los Angeles were that outraged about having fast-food restaurants in their neighborhood, they could easily boycott the places and leave the corporate owners with no choice but to pull up stakes and find a new place to sell their shitty food.

But guess what: they’re staying because people are buying the crap.

“But Chase, but Chase,” you say, “these people are poor and vulnerable and they’re being preyed upon by corporate vultures.” Really? Are you really willing to go so far as to insult these folks by suggesting that they can’t make up their own minds over where and what they eat? Does it mean that they’re stupid and unable to think for themselves just because they’re poor? That’s a bit condescending, isn’t it?

That seems to be the underlying theme of what the councilmen are saying. People are obese, they figure, because they’re eating at these fast-food joints. The fast-food joints are all over the place, so it must be a situation where the people are eating there because the restaurants are there. The people are poor so it’s obvious that they can’t think for themselves. They’re too dumb to know that you can make healthier fare at home. The council needs to guide them in the proper direction.

As if that’s not bad enough, one other theme that the council is helping to perpetuate is one of passing the blame. If you’re obese, it’s not your fault; you can blame a corporation.

Happy Meal
Obesity is a huge problem in this country but having the government make food choices for its citizens is a frightening proposition. After all, if we start doing this, where does it end? Does the local, state, or federal government get the green light to tell you what you eat and how much you eat, even if it’s in a sit-down restaurant? This isn’t a situation where politicians are making dietary suggestions; they’re actually trying to determine what the neighborhood eats by deciding what type of restaurant comes in what type doesn’t.

A less-intrusive solution would be one that emphasizes education. Talk about fast-food in a public forum; help people to realize what kind of garbage is in that Big Mac, Whopper, or meat-lovers pizza. Help them to understand that it would be in their best interest to put down that McNugget and pick up a bowl of homemade vegetable soup. Let them know that fiber should come in the form of Grape Nuts—not a cardboard Quarter-Pounder box.

If that’s accomplished we can then watch to see what the locals do. Do they avoid fast food or do they continue to frequent their local McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, or Pizza Hut? If they continue to eat at these establishments, it’s a sign that they want to eat there. It’s a sign that they know what they’re doing and they’re happy doing it.

If the South Los Angeles residents are happy making a bad dietary decision the council shouldn’t take the view that they’re omnipotent overseers who can somehow engineer society to go in the “right” direction. The poor eating decisions by the locals are—and should be—just that: their decision.

I Say ‘Tomato,’ You Say ‘Slick Advertising’
Unfortunately for this debate—and I should say unfortunately for the importance of this issue—my pragmatic side knows that this argument is going to go the way of a topic like Wikipedia.

For example, when the back-and-forth banter begins over whether or not Wikipedia is a legitimate source of information, the two sides in the debate aren’t focused on the information itself. One side is concerned with the final product; the other side is concerned with the concept behind the product.

This fast food debate will probably go the same route. One side will agree with me and suggest that eating fast food is a choice; others will argue that it’s the fault of corporations, capitalism, and the pursuit of profit.

This comment was left on a site that I found while searching for images of fast food and I thought that it was a wonderful example of this idea:

The premise that consumers demand something and that’s why companies sell it misses the point that businesses sell product [sic] not because consumers demand it but because selling at a profit makes money for them. Once you have an infrastructure in place, the total effort is in maximizing margin. Obviously people want to buy the product for some reason; the question is what’s the reason, and are those reasons being actively manipulated to increase the margin[?] Margin is more significant than demand because you can’t make up losses on volume.

And so, apparently demand isn’t as influential in a product’s sale as is consumer manipulation to increase the profit margin. People might want the fast food, but not as much as they realize (here’s that you-can’t-think-for-yourself philosophy again).

Now I’m hungry for some homemade vegetable soup. I’m not sure who I can blame if I end up eating too much. It’s good that I won’t have to blame myself.

References

Hoag, Christina. “Los Angeles Wants to Take Bite Out of Fast Food.” Google News. 29 July 2008.

Shaniqua. “We Can’t Blame Obesity on Fast Food.” (comment). Gimme-five. 7 Nov. 2006.

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