Healthy Fast Food Is Not An Oxymoron
America's children confront an obesity epidemic. Many point to fast food as the culprit. This casual causal connection has led to toy bans on children's meals that do not meet nutritional guidelines in cities like San Francisco and others. Bernstein (2011) notes toy bans are designed "to discourage restaurant chains from tempting youngsters to consume high-calorie, sodium-laced friend fare" linked to increasing levels of obesity in children (p. B1). Los Angeles has taken a different tact all together, banning new fast-food restaurants in South Los Angeles, a major portion of the city that has "significantly higher rates of poverty and obesity than other neighborhoods" (Medina, 2011, p. 1). Despite these draconian measures to resolve the obesity epidemic in the U.S., fast food is not the same thing as unhealthy food in many cases. For this reason, such measures to control individual choices in the U.S. are misplaced, since eating healthy fast food or any other food remains a personal not a state choice.
The faulty logic in toy or fast food restaurant bans stems from the fact that those who support them make a direct connection between fast food restaurants and obesity. Yet many individuals are obese because they eat too much and get too little exercise, the same with our children. One reason is the elimination of physical education programs in many schools due to budgets. Another reason is that the computer-video-laptop-iPhone era tends to make children and adults more sedentary than active. As Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association spokesman Richard Turner asserts: "It's ridiculous to blame restaurants for someone's weight" (Bernstein, 2011, p. B1). For this reasons, such bans are illogical since they will not force people to eat less, make smarter eating choices or make them less sedentary.
Another reason laws that ban fast food rest
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