NCAAbbs

Los Angeles to put a 1 year moratorium on fast food in impoverished areas.

This is crazy. The American people have proven over and over that they like fast food. So the government is going to decide what they can and can't eat. Maybe the Los Angeles government should work on what makes them impoverished rather than what their waist lines look like.

Those of us in public education in the inner city have been fighting the "junk food" wars for a long time. Suburban and rural schools often are set apart from commercial food establishments. Inner city schools are often surrounded by them. At most city schools, at least a half dozen "convenience" stores, burger / shake, and such stores are a block or less from the school's property.
Add to that the entrepreneurial character of most students, and the situation is almost hopeless. The demand will be met with a supply (purchased by parents at "big bulk stores") found in book bags and such and sold out of school lockers that double as storefronts. Cell phones make the dealings much easier. It's hard enough to keep kids from selling illegal stuff, and almost impossible to keep them from selling candy, potato chips and sweet sugary sodas.
The school is trying to curb the unhealthy eating styles the kids live in. We limit salt and fat in their lunch. They eat their contraband chips and such and throw their bland (to them) lunch into the trash can. We can make sure only healthy snacks are placed in the school's vending machines, but the kids will swap them for other kinds of foods in the halls or leave them in the machines. Culture is a very hard thing to change just by instruction. They live immersed in an unhealthy living and eating style 185 non-school days per year and 16 of the 24 hours each of the remaining 180 school days. "Government" does what government can do. Its limited effect is seen each day in the obese school children who live as their families live, not as their teachers tell them to live. That is why they "drop out" so often in spite of teachers telling them they need to "stay in school" and "get an education". It is all part of the same problem, not something different.

government interference, plain and simple.
what does LaLa land think this will accomplish? Check back in 5 years. There will still be fat people there.
Apparently, the only restaurants that want to be in these areas ARE of the fast food variety.
If it was a profitable venture, other eating establishments would be there.
Guess they're gonna' compel [with some form of incentive] a 'meat and two' to open shop . Then coerce people eat there.
You can eat unhealthy at a meat and two, also.

Calories are a measure of how good food tastes.

And there go some jobs that poorer people tend to gravitate towards.

This is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. If poor people want to eat fast food, then let them. No amount of education or reason can help the majority of people who live in these impoverished neighborhoods.

BAMANBLAZERFAN has just provided us with another reason for homeschooling. Fewer fat kids :) Just kidding

The point is that "government" should not be involved in changing cultural attitudes. All things being equal, it should not "do what it can do." It's this kind of attitude, that the government should do things for people, that has spread the government thin into areas it was never designed to address.

No offense, but it is the schools job to educate - not to change eating styles. What the kids do with that education is up to them.

This statement right here is what is wrong with our public schools. The teacher is not the higher authority than the parent.

And if what you say is true. Why do public schools allow obese teachers to teach. They should be fired for being bad role models.

If they "did something about what caused them to be impoverished" then there would be bitching as well. IIRC the reason we have a Federal Republic is so that local governments can make these types of decisions. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States against this type of decision, and I'd assume no such restriction in the California Constitution as well. States rights is great until a state or local government does something you don't like.

What? No fat teachers? No fat lunch room ladies? What would Adam Sandler sing about?

And the great thing about our Federal Republic is that we can gripe about how stupid local leaders are sometimes and not have to worry about being waterboarded for doing so. Fortunately there is no ban on griping in the US Constitution. I can't say for certain if it is against the California constitution or not because they have some pretty stupid rules and interpretations of law in that state. Fortunately I don't have to live there but just as the poke fun at the south for being backwards, I can poke fun at California for being.... well, California.

what BTR said, plus
there's no law to prevent California from being stupid. H#LL, I've come to expect it.
Nothing done on the left coast surprises me anymore.
imo,
they have lots more problems to deal with than obesity.

The really cool thing is that some university will get a grant for $5,659,830.12 to study the cause and effect of fast food and childhood obesity in inner city impoverished areas near schools. The results will be nil but there will be fewer fast food restaurants, fewer inner city high school kids with jobs at fast food restaurants, but somebody will finish their doctoral thesis.

This is like trying to decrease teen pregnancy by banning KY Jelly. But, I expect no less from L.A.

The difference is you said the LA government stepped out of it's bounds. I never said you shouldn't be allowed to gripe about it, though I think it's a waste of effort to gripe about the actions of a government that a) you don't pay taxes to, b) you don't vote for and c) doesn't affect you because you don't live in LA. If the people of LA want those rules, then so be it. If you want to gripe about it on the internet, so be it. If I want to say you're dumb for doing it..so be it.

It actually wouldn't surprised me if there's something that restauranteurs could sue about to get this law changed.

There's no way. This is a zoning issue, and there's no way that any court is going to overturn zoning laws, lest you want strip clubs popping up next to elementary schools

First off, GOVERNMENT in a republic is a reflection of its population base. It can only try to do what it is asked by its citizens to try to do. Different populations in different places ask different levels of government involvement in social issues.
As a LEGAL REQUIREMENT the teacher is to "act in place of the parent" regarding the welfare of the child under their care and supervision. In the Latin jargon of the law, it is "in loco parentii". We try to respond to this requirement by teaching, by example as well as instruction, the right ways to live in this world. Some teachers put it in a theological context which is risky in today's mixed student population, and most try to couch the lessons in more general rules of good citizenship.
I don't believe any teacher could be expected to ignore the cultural inadequacies of some students without at least trying to change them for the better. Most of us are parents ourselves and will not tell our students that their values are "OK" if we would not support them in our own children.