Socially Engineering Food Choices Doesn’t Work
To say that Los Angeles merely failed would be putting it mildly.
Earlier this week, the nonpartisan RAND Corporation released a study that helps demolish the argument that governments (cities, in this case) can socially engineer away residents’ obesity by restricting food freedom.
The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, focuses on a ridiculous, controversial, seven-year-old zoning ban on new fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles. To say that the measure merely failed would be putting it mildly.
“Since the fast-food restrictions were passed in 2008, overweight and obesity rates in South Los Angeles and other neighborhoods targeted by the law have increased faster than in other parts of the city or other parts of the county,” reads a RAND press release on the study.
Well then.
“The South Los Angeles fast food ban may have symbolic value, but it has had no measurable impact in improving diets or reducing obesity,” said lead author Roland Sturm of RAND.
The RAND study results represent some of the best evidence to date that policies that restrict food freedom do no make people healthier. The failure and repeal of Denmark’s so-called “fat tax” and damning research on mandatory menu labeling are two other convincing examples.
https://reason.com/archives/2015/03/21/socially-engineering-food-choices-doesnt