It was in 2008 when the city of Los Angeles decided to tackle the issue of obesity. A zoning law banned new fast-food restaurants in South LA which is considered as one of the poorest and least-healthy areas of the city.
The initiative might seem to be a great idea to prevent people from eating junk food. But as it appears, this initiative backfired. As of now, the number of obese people in the Southern Los Angeles is much greater than the rest of the U.S., according to the recent Rand Corp. Study.
According to the report, which was first published in the Social Science & Medicine journal, the number of obese and overweight people in South LA has increased to 75 percent from 63 percent between 2007 to 2012. During that same time period, the number of obese people in the U.S. increased from 57 percent to 58 percent.
Roland Sturm who is a Rand Corp economist and the lead author of the study says "The South Los Angeles fast food ban may have symbolic value, but it has had no measurable impact on improving diets or reducing obesity."
Maybe it backfired because the government was taking action on the surface level and not thinking through about the other things that might be the cause of a person being overweight, such as not having regular meals, or overeating every time, or maybe it is the genetics which definitely plays a huge role in a person being overweight or not.
According to Vocativ, the City Councilman Bernard C. Parks told the LA Times, "We never believed it was going to be an overnight situation where all of a sudden the community was going to be healthy."
