One of my first impressions of Los Angeles was my shock that there was donut shop on every block. In the Valley there’s a strip mall with a retailer featuring donuts and fried chicken. . . I’ve often wondered what donuts from that shop taste like. . . I would hope they use a different vat for the chicken. . . This herd of donut stores surprised me because I thought California to be land of the granola-eating tree hugger; rather that stereotype is relegated to Northern California, while starvation diets and cosmetic surgery are all the rage in SoCal, to balance out the donut shops and cupcake bakeries.
A new UCLA study links poor health outcomes with one’s proximity to fast and junk food retailers. The LATimes reports
Higher rates of diabetes and obesity occur in neighborhoods — regardless of the residents’ income, race or ethnicity — where fast-food restaurants and convenience stores greatly outnumber grocery stores and produce vendors, according to a statewide study released today.
It makes sense. . . when you’re hungry and have money to burn, you’re not going out of your way for a meal. You stick within walking distance at lunch or stay relatively local for dinner with friends. Thus, your options are limited by the restaurants and stores in your local vicinity. While you ultimately decide where you go, your options are limited by your geography.
Of the top 10 franchises of 2008 (per Entrepreneur.com’s 29th Annual Franchise ranking), should you be looking to invest:
#1 7-Eleven (30,642 franchises)
#2 Subway (29,929 franchises
#3 Dunkin’ Donuts (7376 franchises)
#4 Pizza Hut (9881 franchises)
#5 McDonalds (20,099 franchises)
#6 Sonic Drive In (2656 franchises)
#7 KFC (11,071 franchises)
#9 Domino’s (2073 franchises)
Eight of the top 10 recommended franchises are fast food restaurants. Think about YOUR neighborhood, can you go a block through a city and not find deep friend or foil-bagged options? It’s an incredible rarity.
In California, the researchers found that
Obesity rates were 20% higher in neighborhoods with five or more times as many fast-food outlets as produce vendors, compared with those with three or fewer, the study found.
While it is an individual’s responsibility to to decide what’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; it’s a community’s responsibility to maximize the availability of healthy options when approving new business licenses and developing new strip malls and local attractions.
May 7, 2008 at 3:32 am |
I think you can look at it another way though. The fast food outlets survive where the demand is, that is why they exist in the places they do. Healthy food outlets unfortunately find it more difficult to survive, so their are fewer of them.
I am all for healthy eating though, and the thought of eating fast food makes me feel ill. I definitely think there is a case for governments to subside healthy food with taxes from unhealthy food.
May 7, 2008 at 4:48 am |
It’s a chicken and the egg debate.
Poor and non-white neighborhoods have more convenience stores & less supermarkets than richer neighborhoods. Poor and non-white neighborhoods have more fast food restaurants. Poor and non-white neighborhoods have more liquor stores. Poor and non-white neighborhoods also tended to have fewer fruit and vegetable markets, bakeries, specialty stores, and natural food stores
So which came first? The chicken or the egg?
Supermarkets are in business to make money. Are we saying that supermarket chains are choosing to forgo profits by avoided poorer neighborhoods?
Not a simple question
link to a research study on this subject
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/525636_4
May 7, 2008 at 9:33 am |
People typically want convenience, that’s what fast food offers.
It also offers high calories for low cost, which is mistaken as a “bargain” in low income areas. The high cost of organic is in part due to subsidies to traditional farmers. It’s totally counterintuitive, we should be encouraging organic farmers not mass production of crops that are nutritionally dull.
As i recall, Pret a Manger (http://pretamanger.com/us/menu/) did a bang up business in NYC during the lunch crunch, and you could get a pretty darned healthy lunch there if you picked wisely. How does it do in the UK?
Organic to Go (http://www.organictogo.com/) is starting to pop up all over in Los Angeles. Though the prices are outrageous, you can also score a tastey, relatively healthy lunch in a relatively speedy manner (presuming you choose to avoid their 400 calories cookies and such)
May 8, 2008 at 6:19 am |
Well the nearest Pret a Manager is about 2 hours away from where I currently live, so I don’t know much about them.
I think healthier eating is starting to creep into peoples conciousness, but most people are too short termism to care about it. The pay off for eating healthily is perceived to be so far down the line I don’t think people care so much about it.
I think there is massive confusion about what is healthy and what is not too. People get sucked into thinking something is healthy because it says it contains strawberries on the tin/bottle yet they don’t advertise all the other rubbish that goes into it.
I don’t know what the solution is, but there is definitely a problem there that needs solving.
May 9, 2008 at 5:33 pm |
It amazes me at the way advertising, tv commericals, etc. brainwash people. Why can’t people think for themselves? Why does the mass majority follow blindly down the road to destruction?
If you eat so called ‘junk’ food, your body winds up junk. There are a few fast food places you can get a fair meal if you chose carefully, but, they are few and far between.
THINK! Learn how to think, not what to think. YOU are responsibile for yourself. Not anyone else. Take control of your life. Read. Educate yourself. Put some effort into your life. Or, are you like the fellow that says, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”"Just give me my rocking chair.” (or recliner and remote) Thats not quiet good enough for me.
May 9, 2008 at 5:37 pm |
Reuben,
It’s narrow minded to think that it’s just an issue of food choice for people; for many low income individuals it also comes down to money. There’s a higher calorie return per dollar at a fast food restaurant.
Not everyone can afford to be organic everything on the table. Many times 2nd quality food is considered a privilege.
People internalize messages they see over and over and over again; marketing does its job.
May 10, 2008 at 4:45 am |
“There’s a higher calorie return per dollar at a fast food restaurant”.
Getting enough calories each day is not a problem in North America. Obesity is a problem. Type 2 diabetes is a problem.
Getting actual nutrition is a problem.
Reuben is 100% percent right. Think for yourself. Be responsible for yourself. Act for yourself.
We elect representatives to gov’t that were happy to create and are happy to continue to fund a agricultural-industrial complex where nutrition is irrelevant. The topsoil has nearly been destroyed over the past century, we reduce our exposure to vital minerals through the use of chemical fertilizers. We focus our efforts on producing corn,soy,wheat and rice to the exclusion of the wide variety of other foods. We feed our livestock massive doses of antibiotics at the same time that the human medical community is trying to reduce the overprescription of antibiotics to humans…I could go on and on
And about organic food – Do you know what your grandparents called organic food?………..FOOD!
Wow, food without chemical & steroids & dyes & preservatives, etc….
The rant has endeth
May 12, 2008 at 9:16 pm |
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