By Brendan McLaughlin

Fast food chains would go broke in a world full of me. I jump on a Big Mac maybe twice a year, but when the urge strikes... get out of my way.  Maybe it's because I regard the offerings of McDonalds, Taco Bell and Burger King to be more candy than food- a pure pleasure in moderation that turns toxic in excess. Like Criss Angel!

But  City Council members in Los Angeles want to impose my abstemious eating habits on the poor, bloated citizens of South L.A.. A proposal meeting with lots of support would  ban new fast food restaurants in 32 square miles of La La Land for at least a year.  I'm hard pressed to think of a more pointless, ineffective and insulting way to combat the very real epidemic of obesity.

The argument is that the poorer neighborhoods of L.A. have fewer grocery stores and no Spago's at all. It's hard out there  for a pimp looking for a spinach salad topped with seared ahi.  A survey showed these areas have a higher percentage of fast food joints than 90210, but they also have fewer restaurants of any kind. So reducing the number of Arby's locations isn't going to give these folks more choices, it's just going to make their lives even more inconvenient. But councilwoman Jan Perry knows best.

What she doesn't seem to realize is that the proliferation of drive-thru eateries everywhere is merely a symptom of other, more solvable problems. Federal agricultural subsidies have created an incentive to grow vast quantities of cheap corn that end up in almost every menu item on the board including the chicken nuggets, the burgers, the fries and the soft drinks in the form of high fructose corn syrup. The corn ethanol debacle is making these items pricier, but the low low price of a fast food lunch is only possible because of taxpayer funded subsidies.

Fast food restaurants also thrive because our economy generally requires families have two full time wage earners to stay afloat. That leaves little time for leisurely family dinners. So instead of trying to redline poor neighborhoods against Chick Filet, how about educating people about the joys of healthy food starting in the public schools where most of us first cultivate our taste for junk food?

If you really want to save people from themselves, the answer is not to give them fewer choices. It's giving them more (with a side of fries).