On the heels of NYC’s attempts to mandate calorie counts on restaurant menus, Los Angeles may legislate more healthful eating by banning fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles. The City Council will consider a proposal by Council woman, Jan Perry, to ban new fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles for 2 years. South Los Angeles has become Fast Food City with the highest concentration of fast food restaurants in LA and one of the lowest concentrations of grocery stores, according to the Los Angeles Times.

This fast food gluttony is making the citizens of south Los Angeles sick:

• 30% of adults in South LA are obese compared with 21% in LA county
• 29% of children in South LA are obese compared with 23% in LA county
• South LA has incidence of diabetes at 12% compared with 8% in the LA county.

Celebrity Diet Doctor Weigh in…
South LA is, not coincidently, one of the poorest areas of LA and these fast food restaurants fill a need for quick and cheap meals. Obviously more needs to be done to create economic incentives to promote healthier food choices for its citizens. Step one would be for the City to help establish grocery stores in this community. Step two would be to clean up the school lunch programs which are a nutritional disaster of pizza, burgers and fries.

While this ban is clearly not the answer for our health care crisis it will hopefully open up debate on some real solutions to this problem.

New York City, which is fast becoming a nutritional trail blazer by banning trans-fats in restaurants, has suffered a setback in its latest efforts to get calorie count information posted on restaurant menus. A judge struck down the new requirement due to the “voluntary aspect” of requiring only those restaurants that have posted nutritional information “voluntarily”, such as on websites and pamplets, to comply. This was done to target the big fast food chains such as McDonalds and Wendy’s. Not surprisingly these restaurants pulled these “voluntary calorie counts” and argued that they were exempt from the new rules.

Don’t think NYC is going to take this latest setback lying down. The Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, responded with this shot across the bow:

“Anyone who thinks we’re going to walk away from trying to tell the public what they’re eating and what it’s doing to them doesn’t understand the obligation this city’s health department has”

Get ready for the City to do away with the “voluntary” provision and mandate calorie counts for all restaurants to comply with federal laws.

Whether calorie count information will lead consumers to make better choices is debatable. Since 99% of the food in most fast food restaurants consists of “triple bypass” food a better idea is to copy the Surgeon General warning on cigarettes.

• SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Eating this Food Causes Heart Disease, Cancer and Diabetes.
• SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Not Eating this Food Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.
• SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: This Food Contains Large Amounts of Saturated Fat, Sugar, and Salt.

Pepsi announced that they were going to launch a Diet version of their flagship sports drink Gatorade “for athletes when they are not breaking a sweat.” Although a diet version of a the competing sports drink Powerade did not fare well, Pepsi states that they created Diet Gatorade in response to consumer demand.

Why Diet Gatorade is a bad idea if you’re looking to lose weight.
While less active could refer to those who walk instead of run, for most it will just be consumed as a “guiltless pleasure” while sitting on the couch watching Sunday football. Although Pepsi’s chairmen states the “lower-calorie version would be marketed to athletes for use when they were less active,” suffice it to say “less active” is code for “consumers that sit in front of the TV and snack.” “Less calories” is still going to mean “more calories” when you consider we should just be drinking water.

It’s back… Call it a McReincarnation. Shamed into oblivion by bad press and the cult hit movie “Super Size Me”, McDonald’s pulled the plug on the “super size me” line of sodas and french fries. Super-sized II, the sequel, is back at McDonalds as part of a summer promotion. The behemoth 42-ounce serving of soda, packs 410 calories and is appropriately called “Hugo.”

In a NY Times article, a McDonald’s spokeswoman defended Hugo against comparisons with the Supersize line of products saying “That’s not what this is about. You have to put it in context with the rest of our menu.” Personally, I think the name Hugo says it all… what’s next Hugo-fries?

A large systemic review to be published in the American Journal of Public Health , links soft drink consumption with greater calorie consumption and body weight. The review concludes “recommendations to reduce population soft drink consumption are strongly supported by the available science.”

This is really nothing new and just another nail in the coffin over the soda-obesity link debate. Problem is when we consume calories from any drink we are not satisfying our appetite so we don’t wind up eating less of other foods. Watch out, because these calories add up quickly. Consuming just two 12 ounce coca-cola drinks a day for a year can lead to over 32 lbs of weight gain, so if you’re looking to lose weight avoid any calorie drinks.

The American Beverage Association gave their spin on the debate “it is not feasible to blame any one food product or beverage as being a sole contributor to obesity… No science supports such a claim.”

thanks, but I’ll drink water instead…

Do you really want to know that the Wendy’s chicken club sandwich you just ate weighs in at 650 calories, and that you just washed it down with another 430 calories from a medium chocolate frosty?

Apparently this is “too much information” for Wendy’s, White Castle and Quiznos which have decided to pull down all nutritional and calorie information from their stores and websites serving the NYC area. This is in reaction to NYC Dept of Health’s new calorie-disclosure regulation, to take effect July 1, which requires restaurants, serving standard portion sizes, to post calorie-counts on menu boards.

In a misguided attempt to target the bigger chains, this ordinance would only apply to restaurants that already post such nutritional information voluntarily on fliers and posters for example. Not surprisingly, these restaurants responded by pulling down all “voluntary” nutritional and calorie information to avoid this regulation.

Wendy’s crafted this response, posted on their website, arguing that their menu boards did not have enough real estate to accommodate calorie-counts.

“We fully support the intent of this regulation; however, since most of our food is made-to-order, there isn’t enough room on our existing menu boards to comply with the regulation.

Interesting argument… now how many calories are in that chicken club sandwich? I think I’ll pass…