New fast food outlets will be banned in the borough of Cote des Neiges / Notre Dame de Grace starting Feb. 1 in all but three spots: St James twixt Benny and West Broadway. Cote des Neiges Plaza and Decarie from Queen Mary to Vezina.
The borough's definition of a fast food place is any place that serves food in containers and has no table service.
Here are some arguments for and against this policy.
Here are some arguments for and against this policy.
Reasons to support the ban
- The ban might help people lose weight by limiting their eating options.
Reasons to oppose the ban
- A restaurant that uses fast-food techniques to sell healthy foods will not be permitted to open.
- It is unfair to focus on the serving method as the determining factor in the quality of a food.
- It confers an enormous advantage upon existing fast food places by eliminating any future competition, whether it be of the healthy or non-healthy variety. This undermines the spirit of the free market.
- Fast food is not always unhealthy. It's an excellent alternate to starvation, scurvy and low blood sugar, for example.
- The ban reduces the enjoyment of life of residents by limiting many people consuming food that they might like.
- The ban is a goalpost shifter that reduces opportunities for commercial landlords by limiting who they can rent their properties to. (This objection applies to any limiting of the type of business a landowner can rent his property to).
- It suggests that residents live in a nanny state that assumes citizens are too stupid to make their own choices.
- If somebody is surviving on beets and broccoli and wants to eat an ice cream at a fast food joint, then why not?
- The ban could be challenged in court and lead to a costly legal battle to be paid by taxpayers.
- Municipal fast food bans enacted elsewhere were often enacted through less direct means, such as by citing traffic issues, indicating that a direct ban might not survive a court ruling.
- The ban makes it appear the city council has nothing better to do.
good on em. fast food is hardly classifiable as food anyway.
ReplyDeletei'm not a free marketeer and i read enough to know that we're already living in a nanny state mostly bought and paid for by businesses like mcd. might as well have some of this benevolent "nannying" i keep being warned about once in a while.
I hardly think that infrequently eating junk food (e.g. hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, soft drinks, etc.) should be considered a major health risk and that everyone ought to be penalized or extra-sales-taxed for doing so.
ReplyDeleteHow many people actually consume junk food such as poutine every single day, anyway? Doing so would only result in becoming bored with it. Having it only a couple of times per year would make it a special event and be hardly deleterious unless your doctor told you otherwise, of course.
What is your very favourite chocolate bar? Is it so compulsively delicious that you would actually eat one or more for breakfast or just before going to bed? Not likely.
Even as a kid, you somehow instinctively know your limits. It's the ones who don't who need help.
Too much of a good thing...