Ban on Fast Food to Reduce Obesity

City of Los Angeles is considering a legislation that would ban opening of new fast food restaurants in the 32 miles stretch of the city. This raises many questions on the involvement of government regulation in choosing what we eat. Though I understand the obesity epidemic that is prevalent in most of the United States, but is not allowing fast food restaurants the right way to fight the problem of obesity.

In a truly free markets driven by buyers and sellers, market forces will take care of what type of food is right for a particular market. If consumers determine that fast food is bad for them then the demand for that would automatically go down and in turn there would not be a necessity of opening new fast food restaurants. In addition if restaurants determine that the demand for fast food does not exist, then that would force them to think about their menu forcing them to shift to a healthier menu. In fact this may be happening right now where most of the traditional fast food restaurants are offering healthier options like salads as part of their menu in response to consumer demand.

Artificially limiting the demand of certain types of food by government regulation is a step in the wrong direction. There are other better ways to approach this topic and one of them is providing better education on the nutritional value of the foods that we eat so that consumers can make better informed decisions on what is good and bad for them. And the money spent in providing this education is money well spent.

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