Our intrepid leaders want restaurateurs to be food police, so what’s next? Moms posting calorie counts in their kitchens?
L.A.’s never-stay-home mayor, Antonio “Mr. Photo-op” Villaraigosa, and the city council have time to ban mylar balloons, the paparazzo, fast food joints in certain parts of town, plastic bags and raise taxes and not spend the money for its dedicated purpose, but they don’t have time to go after the gangs that run the city.
They aren’t the only ones who go after the safe and the frivolous; the state legislature, which could not balance a budget if they had an elephant scale are at it, too.
If State Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Van Nuys, has his way, he will be the Calorie-in-Chief Policeman, because here he comes again telling us to count calories, but who’s counting?
According to the Los Angeles County Health Department, hardly anyone, especially the denizens of fast-food restaurants, and they want to ram calorie-counting down their throats, and force-feed us unwanted reminders of how fat we’re getting.
The means to their end is beleaguered businessmen who are already stuffed with enough rules and regulations to choke a horse.
Now they want food entrepreneurs to post calorie counts, too. Unfortunately, New York City restaurateurs lost this same food court fight, setting legal precedent.
It doesn’t seem fair to put the bite on only the fast-food places. All restaurant should be included for the scales to be balanced. The California Restaurant Association is sponsoring Assembly Bill 2572 that, in part, would allow nutritional information be printed in brochures, on posters or tray liners instead of on menus and menu boards.
You gotta eat up the tray liner idea. By the time the food’s on the liner, it’s too late to order differently, and according to a report by former mayor Jim Hahn, 65 percent of L.A. residents are functionally illiterate anyway.
A much better idea would be to have cash registers shout out calorie counts as each item is rung up.
L.A.’s wild and crazy Councilwoman Jan Perry, was skewered and turned into hamburger in her bid to limit the number of new fast-food joints that could be built in South L.A.
Like someone who can’t say ‘no’ to a second helping of dessert, Perry isn’t listening to ‘no’ by her constituents, she brought her nonsense motion before the council again after it
sizzled on the back burner for several weeks.
The council passed her ’interfering-with-market-place’ resolution, and banned the building of fast food places for a year.
Sane, sensible and encouraging local businessmen and increasing employment would have been to build a few super markets in the area, of which there are none, and make it convenient to food-shop, so maybe more people who live there would stay home and cook up a few healthful meals.
Perry and Padilla must have done lunch at the Cheese Cake Factory, and gone on sugar high to join forces and have both their measures be put at the top of the we-know-what’s-better-for-you-than-you-do menu at the same time.
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