Restaurant group plans to fight fast-food restrictions in Los Angeles

Starting next year, major chain restaurants in California will have to include calorie counts of items on menus. Last week, San Francisco officials passed the so-called Happy Meal ban, which forbids toys to be included with meals that don't meet nutritional standards. Santa Clara County had earlier approved such a ban.

Now the battle switches to Southern California, where the city of Los Angeles wants to bring back — and tighten — restrictions on establishing new fast-food restaurants in some minority neighborhoods where obesity is a significant health problem.

The measure unanimously passed the Los Angeles Planning Commission last month and is expected to be taken up by a City Council committee later this month. Behind the scenes, lobbyists have been working City Hall, pointing out that McDonald's, Burger King and other franchises have brought jobs, management training and entrepreneurial opportunities to many disadvantaged people in those very same communities.

"These fast-food franchises are often a ladder if not an elevator up the socioeconomic ladder for folks," said Daniel Conway, spokesman and lobbyist for the California Restaurant Assn. "These companies are trying to bring jobs and tax revenue to this area."

The topic was a hot one this week at a retreat for officials of the trade group.

"We were sitting here at a board meeting trying to figure out how we wound up on the front lines of the culture wars," Conway said. "We're trying to feed people, and here we are in the cross hairs every single day."

But supporters of the L.A. proposal to restrict the new restaurants say the area it would affect — about 40 square miles of South and southeast Los Angeles, including the communities of West Adams, Leimert Park and Baldwin Hills — are drowning in fast food to the detriment of a population that is overburdened with obesity, diabetes and other nutrition-related conditions.

The Times reported in 2008 that fast-food restaurants, which often offer less-expensive fare than sit-down establishments, represented 45% of the eating establishments in South Los Angeles — far more than in other parts of town.