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Recently the McDonald's corporation posted advice to its employees cautioning them about the food the company makes and warning them n...

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A new report released by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says that half of all U.S. adults will be obese by 2030 unless they change their eating habits.

More facts and figures courtesy of Reuters' Factbox: The trends behind America's obesity epidemic http://bit.ly/OGUM3S

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A new report released by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says that half of all U.S. adults will be obese by 2030 unless they change their eating habits. More facts and figures courtesy of Reuters' Factbox: The trends behind America's obesity epidemic http://bit.ly/OGUM3S

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Category #3: The World Accepts Fast Food

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Category #3: The World Accepts Fast Food

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McLibel: "A generation ago American embassies and oil companies were the most likely target of overseas demonstrations against "US imerialism. Today fast food restaurants have assumed that symbolic role, with McDonalds a particular favorite."

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Category #6: There are Few That See the Truth

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Category #6: There are Few That See the Truth

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McLibel: "In a society where food is a source of tremendous national pride, the McDonalds corporation has become and easy target."

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Darker Colors mean more obese people

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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Obesity is a Common, Serious, and Costly Disease

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Get the latest data and facts about adult obesity in the US.

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Category #6: There are Few That See the Truth

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Category #6: There are Few That See the Truth

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McLibel: "In 1986 the group(british activists) decided to target McDonalds, later explaining that the company 'epitomises everything we despise: a junk culture , the deadly banality of capitalism."

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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"The McDonald's Corporation recently used a new phrase to describe its hopes for foreign conquest: "global realization."

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Category #2: There is a Blind Love for Fast Food

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Category #2: There is a Blind Love for Fast Food

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According to the article, "Break the Fast Food Habit", by the online magazine "Experience Life", the ingredients in fast food is not only unhealthy, but addictive.

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The four strategies are: 1. Advance school policies to make healthier food more available in schools and reduce the availability and promotion of unhealthy foods like fast food, soda and candy. 2. Restrict the places where fast food corporations can operate through the use of zoning as well as other administrative actions to remove fast food from parks, hospitals, government buildings and the areas around schools. 3. Limit kid-targeted marketing of unhealthy products to children, such as toy giveaways and the use of kid-friendly characters. 4. Reduce public subsidies for fast food corporations by ending economic development incentives to fast food outlets or tax breaks for fast food corporations, and require corporations that do get subsidies to offer healthier products.

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Uncle McDonald: "McDonald's Deutschland, Inc., is by far the biggest restaurant company in Germany today, more than twice as large as the nearest competitor."

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"While limiting fast-food restaurants isn't a solution in itself, it's an important piece of the puzzle," said Mark Vallianatos, director of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College.

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The City Council may consider a moratorium on allowing new outlets in South L.A., where obesity rates are high.

As America gets fatter, policymakers are seeking creative approaches to legislating health. They may have entered the school cafeteria -- and now they're eyeing your neighborhood.

Amid worries of an obesity epidemic and its related illnesses, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, Los Angeles officials, among others around the country, are proposing to limit new fast-food restaurants -- a tactic that could be called health zoning.

The City Council will be asked this fall to consider an up to two-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in South L.A., a part of the city where fast food is at least as much a practicality as a preference.

"The people don't want them, but when they don't have any other options, they may gravitate to what's there," said Councilwoman Jan Perry, who proposed the ordinance in June, and whose district includes portions of South L.A. that would be affected by the plan.

In just one-quarter of a mile near USC on Figueroa Street, from Adams Boulevard south, there are about 20 fast-food outlets.

"To be honest, it's all we eat," Rey Merlan said one recent lunch hour at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. "Everywhere, it's fast food everywhere."

Merlan said it wasn't likely that a limit on new restaurants would change peoples' habits, even though he thinks it's a good idea.

A Times analysis of the city's roughly 8,200 restaurants found that South Los Angeles has the highest concentration of fast-food eateries. Per capita, the area has fewer eating establishments of any kind than the Westside, downtown or Hollywood, and about the same as the Valley. But a much higher percentage of those are fast-food chains. South L.A. also has far fewer grocery stores.

Thirty percent of adults in South L.A. are obese, compared with 20.9% in the county overall, according to a county Department of Public Health study released in April. For children, the obesity rate was 29% in South L.A., compared with 23.3% in the county.

And the figures are higher than a decade ago. In 1997, the adult rate was 25.3% in South L.A. and 14.3% in the county. South L.A. also has the highest diabetes levels in the county, at 11.7%, compared with 8.1% in the county.

"While limiting fast-food restaurants isn't a solution in itself, it's an important piece of the puzzle," said Mark Vallianatos, director of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College.

This is "bringing health policy and environmental policy together with land-use planning," he said. "I think that's smart, and it's the wave of the future."

Fast-food restaurants haven't missed the cue: From their menus, diners can choose salads over burgers, yogurts over shakes and grilled over fried these days. And many food manufacturers have reconfigured their recipes to eliminate trans fats, the most unhealthful unsaturated fats made of partially hydrogenated oils.

But especially for children, what's to eat is not completely a matter of choice. Legislators in California and elsewhere are giving closer scrutiny to school food. In 2002, the Los Angeles Unified School District was one of the first school districts in the country to ban soda, candy and other high-fat snack foods from school vending machines as of July 2004. The next year the school board decided to reduce sodium, sugar and fat in school lunches. At the federal level, there are proposals in the farm bill to spend an additional $3 billion over five years on fruits and vegetables for school programs.

A California law banning sugary drinks and limiting the fat and sugar content of foods sold in middle and high schools took effect in July. And the state enacted legislation last year to increase the purchase of fruits and vegetables to be sold in corner stores in lower-income communities.

Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) introduced a bill in Congress in June that, among other things, would try to increase the availability of nutritious foods in economically depressed areas.

Regulations by cities

Some cities already regulate fast-food restaurants in certain areas, including Berkeley and Arcata, Calif.

Port Jefferson, N.Y.; Concord, Mass.; and Calistoga, Calif., ban fast-food restaurants in certain districts entirely, according to L.A. city planner Faisal Roble, who drafted Perry's ordinance.

But those earlier regulations are primarily tied to aesthetics or to the protection of smaller businesses, rather than to health concerns, said David Gay, L.A.'s principal city planner.

Perry's ordinance -- a moratorium intended to give the city time to come up with a long-term plan -- would, if passed, affect more than 700,000 residents of South Los Angeles, including West Adams, Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park.

Compared with the Westside, for example, that area has far fewer restaurants -- about 900 versus 2,200, according to The Times' analysis. And about 45% of the restaurants in South Los Angeles are fast-food chains or restaurants with minimal seating, compared with 16% on the Westside.

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The City Council may consider a moratorium on allowing new outlets in South L.A., where obesity rates are high. As America gets fatter, policymakers are seeking creative approaches to legislating health. They may have entered the school cafeteria -- and now they're eyeing your neighborhood.

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Category #5: We Have Become Accustomed to Fat

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Category #5: We Have Become Accustomed to Fat

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Uncle McDonald: "This McDonald's was in Dachau, but it could ave been anywhere -- anywhere in the United States, anywhere in the world. Millions of other people at that very moment were standing at the same counter, ordering the same food from the same menu, food that tasted everywhere the same."

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Category #5: We Have Become Accustomed to Fat

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Category #5: We Have Become Accustomed to Fat

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An Empire of Fat: "44 million American adults are obese. An additional 6 million are 'super obese'; they weigh about 100 pounds more than they should."

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Category #5: We Have Become Accustomed to Fat

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Category #5: We Have Become Accustomed to Fat

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McLibel: "Fast food has become an easy target because it is so ubiquitous and because it threatens a fundamental aspect of national identity: How, Where, and What people choose to eat."

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Category #4: There are No Good Reasons to Eat This

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Category #4: There are No Good Reasons to Eat This

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McLibel: "It accused the fast food chain of promoting Third World poverty , selling unhealthy food, exploiting workers and children, torturing animals, and destroying the Amazon rainforest, among other things."

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Category #4: There are No Good Reasons to Eat This

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Category #4: There are No Good Reasons to Eat This

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At the Circus: "Executives from the major fast food companies had gathered to discuss, among other things, the latest labor-saving machinery and the prospect of someday employing a workforce the needed 'zero training.'"

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Uncle McDonald: "The values, tastes, and industrial practices of the American fast food industry are being exported to every corner of the globe, helping to create a homogenized international culture that sociologest Benjamin R. Barber has labeled 'McWorld.'"

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Category #3: The World Accepts Fast Food

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Category #3: The World Accepts Fast Food

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An Empire of Fat: "44 million American adults are obese. An additional 6 million are 'super obese'; they weigh about 100 pounds more than they should."

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Category #3:The World Accepts Fast Food 

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Category #3:The World Accepts Fast Food 

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Uncle McDonald: "'Welcome to Dachau,' said the leaflets, 'and welcome to McDonald's.'"

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Category #3: The World Accepts Fast Food

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Category #3: The World Accepts Fast Food

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Uncle McDonald: "The golden arches have become so comonplace in Germany that they almost see invisible."

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Category #3: The World Accepts Fast Food

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Category #3: The World Accepts Fast Food

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Uncle McDonald: "This McDonald's was in Dachau, but it could ave been anywhere -- anywhere in the United States, anywhere in the world. Millions of other people at that very moment were standing at the same counter, ordering the same food from the same menu, food that tasted everywhere the same."

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Category #2: There is Blind Love for Fast Food

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Category #2: There is Blind Love for Fast Food

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At the Circus: "Even its name [Mirage Hotel] suggests the triumph of illusion over reality, a promise that you won't believe your eyes."

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Empire of Fat: "The CDC estimates that 280,000 Americans die every year as a direct result of being overweight."

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Uncle McDonald: "Germany is not only the largest country in Europe, but also the most Americanized."

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Category #2: There is Blind Love for Fast Food

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Category #2: There is Blind Love for Fast Food

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Plauen: "Plauen has been a battlefield for these competing ideologies, with their proudly displayed and archetypal symbols: the smokestack, the swastika, the hammer and sickle, the golden arches."

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Category #2: There is Blind Love for Fast Food

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Category #2: There is Blind Love for Fast Food

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At the Circus: "A group of patrons at a Moscow Pizza Hut thanked him [Mikhail Gorbachev] in the add for bringing the fast food chain to Russia and then shouted 'Hail to Gorbachev!'"

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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An Empire of Fat: "During the 1980s, the sale of fast food in Japan more than doubled; the rate of obesity among children soon doubled, too."

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Category #1: Fast Food is Growing (in every way)

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Uncle McDonald: "A decade ago, McDonald's has about three thousand restaurants outside the United States; today it has about fifteen thousand restaurants in more than 117 foreign countries."