By Dean L. Jones
Commonly, an inner city food desert is what authorities have labeled south Los Angeles California to be, a place where affordable and nutritious food is difficult to obtain. This sensitivity of depleted resources has also fueled a large debate over whether food deserts are causing obesity and its related diseases.
On any given day there are over one million people living and working in south Los Angeles. This area shares the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum [home to three NFL teams – a NBL team – the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game (Super Bowl I) – 1932 & 1984 Olympics], a world class science center at Exposition Park, the University of Southern California, the first 54-years of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and the West Adams area once the most desirable area of all of Los Angeles.
In view of that, it is senseless for this vitally rich region to be nutritiously food depleted. With good intentions community health activist groups lobbied city government to limit fast food places and the city council members placed a ban on permitting any additional fast food businesses from operating in South Los Angeles in order to help reduce the growing rate of obesity. Ideally, this was to be followed by healthier dining restaurants to establish themselves in south Los Angeles, in lieu of fat producing fast food places.
Well, nearly a decade later obesity and type-2 diabetes have not subsided in south Los Angeles; in fact these diseases have risen, primarily because consumers are still falling prey to the lure of advertising campaigns that push fast food. Fast food stories are increasingly working to hoodwink consumers, like the one about a high school science teacher from Iowa who lost 56-pounds eating McDonald’s three times a day over six consecutive months.
This story received so much attention of being a good thing in gaining the attention of consumers to fast food diets that now this man is a brand ambassador for McDonald’s. Low key to this story is how the man walked vigorously 45-minutes every day and limited his daily fast food intake to 2000 calories during this period.
Traditional fast food breeds repetitive eating patterns brought about from the addictive added sugar within the ingredients. Whereas, the truly super fast foods are fruits and vegetables, and it takes less time to prepare and incorporate it into daily dining habits than eating traditional fast food. Some top first foods include blueberries, eggs, beans (kidney, black, white, garbanzo…), nuts, salmon, green tea, broccoli, and whole grains.
South Los Angeles will be an attractive region to enterprises that commonly carry for sale fresh spinach (green leaf family), watermelons, avocados, pumpkin seeds, dark chocolates, pineapples, grapes, oranges, apples, cantaloupes, strawberries, bananas… from a consciousness of plant-based first foods. Accordingly, increasingly consuming a wholesome first foods feast is living SugarAlert!
www.SugarAlert.com
Dean Jones is an Ethics Advocate, Southland Partnership Corporation (a public benefit organization), contributing his view on certain aspects of foodstuff.
