The Los Angeles City Council ban on new fast food restaurants in South L.A. might be a step in the right direction (depending on who you talk to), but it’s going to take a lot more work and a good deal of political wrestling to solve the obesity epidemic in America, let alone Los Angeles.

South L.A. faces some of the most serious economic challenges in the county, and “poverty is the strongest socio-demographic determinant of obesity,” says Dr. Antronette Yancey, an associate professor at UCLA’s School of Public Health and co-director of the Center to Eliminate Health Disparities.

Yancey writes in an e-mail interview that she agrees with the moratorium because it “brings widespread attention to the obesity and chronic disease disparities in southern L.A.”

If the city council succeeds in its long-term goal of rezoning South L.A. to attract new businesses, residents there may get access to healthier shopping and dining choices on par with the west side, and though many franchisees and restaurant associations don’t agree with the council’s method, it’s hard to see how better city planning in poor neighborhoods is a bad thing.

However, a report in 2007 by the Los Angeles County Department of Health (the same one cited by city council members) suggests that children in South L.A. experience only a slightly higher rate of obesity than the city average. A quarter of Angeleno children are overweight with or without healthy food options, so leveling the playing field won’t do much to solve the broader problem.

Americans overeat, favor unhealthy foods, and don’t get enough exercise. That much seems clear. But changing these habits at the societal level could require a fundamental overhaul across a variety of sectors both public and private, from farming to infrastructure.

“We are surrounded by a smorgasbord of highly palatable, pervasively marketed, inexpensive, readily accessible, nutrient-poor but energy-dense foods,” Yancey wrote in the April 2007 issue of the journal Obesity Management. “Coupled with seductive sedentary entertainment and transportation options and re-engineering of the built environment to favor automobile transportation over pedestrian or mass transit, our genetic ‘hard-wiring’ [to avoid exercise and eat salty, sweet and fatty foods] easily explains the occurrence of the small caloric excesses and energy expenditure deficits necessary to produce the epidemic.”

Even culture plays a part in overeating. According to Yancey we’re just as likely to stop eating when our favorite show ends or our date finishes her meal as we are when our bellies are full.

So turn off the television at dinner time, sit around the table with your family, and dish up smaller portions. Simple enough. But how do you unravel something as politically tangled as, say, farm policy?

(more…)