Politics and Culture

Some thoughts:
1. The precedent for this is the regulation of vice as in a city not wanting a strip club.
2. Vice laws exist to protect families, children especially, from a member's bad habits. Health laws are to protect us from ourselves (and children from their parent's decisions).
3. Don't the same people who think vice is protected under the constitution want to institute food bans?
4. Vice, as commonly understood, is always bad and unnecessary. Its very appearance in a community is corrupting.
5. On the other hand, food is necessary and people must choose one kind over another. People can drive right past the McDonald's and park in a Subway. Or, one can say that junk food is unnecessary and always corrupting.
6. Vice, like junk food is fun or tasty, but bad for one and the community.
7. This is a whole new level of nanny-stateness.
8. Women can decide whether to abort the child in their belly, but not what food to fill it with.
9. My main objection is that since people have a limited number of things they can care about, they'd care more about physical than moral health.
10. Governments in poor areas can get away with more because nobody pays attention and just keep electing the same people over and over again.

Conclusion:

Not as bad as I originally thought, but I'd still vote against it.

From here.

City officials are putting South Los Angeles on a diet.
Restaurant signs glow July 24 in South Los Angeles, where new fast-food outlets could be banned for a year.

Restaurant signs glow July 24 in South Los Angeles, where new fast-food outlets could be banned for a year.

The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city with a proliferation of such eateries and above-average rates of obesity.

The yearlong moratorium -- which the mayor still must sign into law -- is intended to give the city time to attract restaurants that serve healthier food. The action is believed to be the first of its kind by a major city to protect public health.