The article references incentives for grocery stores to locate in the neighborhoods with fast food restrictions. Has the council researched the grocery store alternatives to the Dollar Menu?
Speaking as someone who has lived in poverty, the food options for cooking at home when you are poor aren’t necessarily any better than a McBurger or fast food fried chicken nutritionally. When large amounts of your diet are composed of potatoes, bread, pasta, beans, etc with a high fat protein, the nutritional outcome is the same. For those poor without much time for food prep, the default becomes cheap frozen dinners and ramen noodles. Even worse.
Fresh fruits and veggies and lean protein cost considerably more in many places than the above alternatives and are not affordable menu items for most people who fall under the poverty guidelines. It’s doubtful that a ban (or partial one) of fast food restaurants will make much impact on the quality of the diets of the folks that it was designed to help and further reduces the number of jobs available within walking / public transportation range of them as well.
This is an example of one class of people ruling over another class of people (class being defined by access to economic and educational resources)
I get some almost comical idea that the ivory tower intellectual elites who promote the idea are assuming that by restricting the availibility of fast food (which this idea does not do), that people are some how, magically begin to cook healthy full course meals from scratch.
It reminds me a of a “food assistance” program in the 1930’s in central Alberta, in which grocers were required to cash gov’t chits for food stuffs. But ONLY nessicities… raw materials… flour, salt, baking powder, uncured hog fat (they could assumably cure it at home), dried cod (thanks Newfoundland, really!), peanut butter, eggs, lard (no butter) and dried peas, lentils. It was designed by the gov’t at the time to offer assitance to dust bowl CDN farmers, but it assumed that every farm wife "knew’ how to use these raw materials to make healthy wholsome foods for their families.
Those farm wifes who had to use these chits weree, in a way a lot more lucky than the current urban crop that is, apparently , being denied access to fast food. They grew up making things from scratch, and had a resource of family and nieghbours to draw upon. Current urban dweller do not , oftenm have the same resource to draw upon.
So even if 18 mini groceries spring up with in a walking distance of Mrs. Hungry Family, is she equiped with the money, knolwedge, tools, time and ability to make them 3 meals a day?
I wonder what would happen if the LA City Council voted to subsidize (with tax breaks) healthy fast-food stores? A store that would normally rent for say $12,000 a month will now go for 3,000 bucks, provided they offer a menu exclusively comprised of healthy, delicious, low-cholesterol, low-calorie foods at below-market prices? (We could call this chain “Sam Stone’s Mama’s Place.”) This seems a much more sound, defensible positon that barring businesses from a particular zone.
If you are a government, and there is a lot of pressure on you to DO something about a situation that is essentially unfixable, you come up with measures that viscerally “sound good”, (“Please take away the cookie jar, I’m dieting, but I’m weak”), that offend the least amount of voters, and from which at least someone can profit.
What if you knew that it cost >$23,000/year to treat an adult-onset diabetes patient? look, lots of people make dumb choices-but treating the end result of decades of fast-food indulgence is going to cost the taxpayer big time!
ralph, what viewpoints are we arguing? You, I thought sarcastically, suggested re-education camps, <I thought> mocking this regulation. I’d already said I thought this regulation primarily benefitted the existent businesses in the area, and since no one was really coming out strongly in favor of the regulation and certainly not to that extreme, I made fun of your suggestion with a Wizard of Oz reference. Now it sounds like you’re supporting the regulation and I’m completely confused!
Yes, but $23,000 pales in comparison to the taxes generated on the multi million dollar contracts of black NBA and NFL athletes who spurred by poverty stricken childhood to excell were nourishing their developing bodies by eating cheap and fast at MacDonalds
would it really kill the government to do something intelligent instead of knee jerk asshatery?
for the price of the paperwork and all the ensuing BS they could probably drop a grocery store into the community (or several smaller ones) and hold free classes on easy healthy cooking thats done cheap.
for 90% of my cooking needs I could get away with a skillet, a pot, a crock pot, one chefs knife and one serrated, cutting board, a spatula/ladle some food storage and some essentials like salt/pepper/veggie oil. you could pretty easily set up something like a program where people could pay a very very low cost fee to take classes and take home the cooking equipment they are using that day in class.
but that would mean someone would have to actually do some work.
I have wondered why education is virtually ALWAYS the last option government looks at and when they do its usually the education only a moron would think was a good idea. this goes right back to the friggin bible “give a man a fish…”
I think if you give people the option, educate them in the basics of cooking and shopping that many would take what you gave them and run with it.
Its called “Home Economics”-taught in High School. They actiually teach you how to cook! All this talk makes me laugh-in my grad student days, I ate very well for short money-the secret? crock pot and cheap cuts of meat, veggys on sale. i’d make enough soup, chili, potroast, stew, to last for several meals. I could never have afforded to eat at those fast food places-i cooked my own food and it was good food.
A single mom with three screaming kids and two jobs knows a little about work. Maybe you might consider knocking off a little of the condescension. Poverty is often a self-perpetuating trap. If you don’t get paid sick time off or health insurance and you have kids, just how are you going to get ahead? If you’re working two or three jobs just to keep food on the table and roof over your head, finding time to cook nice meals and read to the kids becomes a luxury, not a given.
Ten dollars an hour, which is not a bad pay rate for someone without any particular job skills, is $400/week for a 40 hour week, or roughly $20K/year before taxes and Social Security. That’s assuming neither you nor your kids are ever sick or have to stay home for the cable guy or the telephone man. Very few families can live on that, so we start looking at multiple jobs. And that’s when things like cooking meals get tough.
Sure, there are lazy and/or stupid people who are poor. There are lazy and/or stupid people who are rich, too. Most people are just doing the best they can.
no condensation intended, well at least not towards the poor. my point was the government instead of trying to educate and help people take care of them selves is simply trying to put a plan in place that not only is untested but has no logical reason to work.
as for time to cook, the crock pot will make meals for 6 or more people pretty easy (6 quart anyway) and cook time is as long as it takes you to chop up veggies and add spices/meat to the pot. I usually do it the night before and leave the pot in the fridge over night then just drop it in the cooker and hit low.
most food you can cook at home is healthier than anything you will be able to get at mcdonalds unless you are trying for garbage. and with some basic shopping skills its as cheap or cheaper than low end fast food.
and Home ec is a great idea badly implemented, what 7th grader is going to remember any of that crap by the time they hit 20? you are trying to teach a life skill to a person who thinks 18 years old is ancient and 21 is some mythical age that they will never some how realize themselves.
home ec for adults is basically what I am proposing, and government funded at least partially
Funny you mention this - it brings up an interesting story concerning your hometown - and mine.
The Hill District in Pittsburgh - a struggling community to say the least, hasn’t had a full-service grocery store for about thirty years, and the top priority of everyone supposedly was getting one to move back. Enter Aldi - who expressed an absolute enthusiasm to locate a store there - and provide produce, meat, dairy, basic groceries and other items for about half the cost of Giant Eagle, and 25% below Wal-Mart.
You’d think “community leaders” would jump for joy. But they didn’t - they told Aldi to pound sand, hoping to hold out for a full service store. They still don’t have one - Sav-A-Lot is thinking of moving in, but that’s very preliminary. Aldi could have been operating for more than two years already.
Fast food? Bad as that is, this is worse. This is criminal.
That is a shame, Mr. Moto. I have an Aldi a few miles away. They don’t have a full selection of products, but what they do have is cheap and of decent quality - the very thing that would be of value in a low income neighborhood. I’d love to have one within easy walking disance of me!
