Driving home from work on a quarter tank of gas in the middle of rush hour traffic, you flip on the radio and start planning the rest of your evening. Well, let's see...you have to pick up your dry cleaning, call the cable guy to see why all of your channels are so fuzzy, pay some of the bills that have been collecting (that cable bill!), take Pooch for a walk, and clean the apartment for your mother who'll be visiting this weekend... Oh and you might want to grab a bite to eat sometime between now and the time you get home.

That's when those Golden Arches appear, ushering you into a parking lot full of food-deprived, time-starved patrons looking for something quick, cheap and tasty. What will it cost you? Five minutes, five dollars and... well, high cholesterol, diabetes, and heart disease.

Millions of Americans flood fast-food restaurants everyday, supersizing value meals, ordering their chicken extra crispy, and enthusiastically answering "Yes" to the age old question "Do you want fries with that?" Not surprisingly, millions of Americans are also overweight and face a horde of health risks associated with obesity.

But in South Los Angeles, politicians are hoping to tip the scales in favor of healthier restaurants by placing a moratorium on new fast food eateries. The City Council voted unanimously to enact a year-long moratorium that prevents any new fast food restaurants from opening in the area in order to combat above average rates of obesity in South L.A.

According to the Los Angeles Department of Public Health, approximately 30 percent of adults in South L.A. are obese and 28 percent are living in poverty. Meanwhile, about 45 percent of the restaurants in South L.A. serve fast food. Researchers believe that these statistics may be connected.

"Where someone lives directly affects their chances of being overweight," Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health, told the Los Angeles Times. "In neighborhoods with fewer grocery stores than fast-food restaurants, the residents not only have higher obesity rates, but they also have higher rates of dying."

That's part of the reason why Councilwoman Jan Perry proposed the ordinance last June. Perry says people in her district need expanded dining choices that include healthier options.

"Some people will say, 'Well, people just don't have to eat it,'" Perry told the Washington Post. "But the fact of the matter is, what if you have no other choices?"

For residents in Perry's district, finding fast food is much easier than finding fresh groceries. However, this is a problem common in lower income neighborhoods, where people can't afford to buy expensive food and instead opt to eat cheap, unhealthy meals.

"There's one set of food for one part of the city, another set of food for another part of the city, and it's very stratified that way," Marqueece Harris-Dawson, executive director of Community Coalition, an activist group based in South-Central L.A. told the Post.

Perry has already created an incentive plan to attract more restaurants and grocery stores into the area. And although supporters of the ban have expressed concern that residents have cemented fast foods in their diets, they still feel that introducing new establishments will help their cause.

"While limiting fast-food restaurants isn't a solution in itself, it's an important piece of the puzzle," Mark Vallianatos, director of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College, told the L.A. Times. "Bringing health policy and environmental policy together with land-use planning...I think that's smart, and it's the wave of the future."

However, fast food restaurants aren't ready to give up some of their most loyal customers without a fight. The California Restaurant Association is already planning legal action against the ordinance.

Members of the fast food industry believe that the city could have chosen a better plan of action, which may have included introducing healthier options onto fast food menus (or maybe adding calorie counts to their menus like they do in New York City -- surely that will scare some patrons enough for them to stop ordering bacon on their burgers).

Others add that they already have healthy choices and that it is up to the customers to decide what they eat.

"It's not where you eat, it's what you eat," Andrew Puzder, president and chief executive of CKE Restaurants, parent company of Carl's Jr, told the Associate Press. "We were willing to work with the city on that, but they obviously weren't interested."

Other opponents of the moratorium question whether the new ban will effectively attract sit-down restaurants to South L.A.

Only allowing full-service restaurants into the area is "like saying we're not going to allow anybody to sell Chevrolets anymore because we want people to buy nothing but Mercedes-Benzes," Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of Foodservice Strategies at WD Partners, a restaurant consulting firm that works with Red Lobster, Jamba Juice and Fatburger, told the Los Angeles Times.

"It's convoluted logic. If the objective is to get full-service, upscale casual dining restaurants in an area, I think the first step is finding out why they're not coming in an area, then start addressing those, and start by incentivizing."

And then there's the problem that many residents don't find any need or have any plans to change their diets, whether new restaurants move in or not.  "I don't think there's too many fast food places," Curtis English, a South L.A. resident, told the Associated Press. "People like it."

Is it really the government's job to say you need to eat healthy, even though you can't afford it?

Still, supporters are applauding Perry and the City Council for, as the Washington Post puts it, their "cutting-edge application of power to promote health."
"As far as we're aware, it's fairly precedent-setting," Vallianatos told the Washington Post. "It's an important public statement on how planning intersects with food health."

"The solution is also grocery stores and improving corner stores, and how do farmers markets survive in low-income areas? And whatever else we can do to make sure this generation isn't the first since the Industrial Revolution to have a lower life expectancy than their parents."

More on this topic:

NYC Restaurants Must Post Calories on Menus

Presidential Physical Fitness Award for adults introduced

Senate takes aim at childhood obesity