Banning Fast Food
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008The Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad reports today over the nods approval coming from the Dutch Voedingscengtrum over the recent policy announced by the city of Los Angeles to impose an initial one-year moratorium on the construction of new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area in the city’s south part. The Voedingscentrum (“Nutrition Center”) is a semi-governmental institution based in The Hague charged with dishing out advice, recipes, etc. having to do with healthy eating (also warnings, in the event of food-safety crises), and naturally it is delighted with the idea of adopting a similar policy in the Netherlands to ban such establishments from areas where there are already “many” of them (“many” not defined anywhere, as far as I can see), as well as near-by schools and those sorts of establishments.
While the AD supplements its brief reporting on this subject with a photo of a pair of fat little tykes to illustrate the point, the Belgian (Flemish) newspaper Het Belang van Limburg goes a step further with a quote from a Voedingscengtrum press-spokesman: “Since children are extra prone to temptation, a similar ban should come in the neighborhood of schools. Eating fast food, as well as other calory-rich consumption, must become an exception. It cannot become a habit.”
