On July 25, Governor Schwarzenegger signed a bill to ban trans fats. And New York City now requires calorie counts be listed on fast food restaurant menus alongside the prices. Today I read the Los Angeles City Council has just decided to prohibit new fast food restaurants from opening in the city's poorest neighborhoods.

For the first time I can remember, we're legislating about what people should or shouldn't eat. Not just a "here's what we suggest" food pyramid or recommended daily allowances. This isn't just about public education or guidance--governing bodies are starting to say, "No, you can't eat that" in cases where it's not a clear-cut instance of tainted food, carcinogens, etc. It's all because we now see obesity, and all of its related problems, as a public health "crisis."

Just ten years ago, it was impossible to imagine the illegalization of cigarettes. It's getting easier to envision by the day--it's unequivocally and irredeemably "bad," not to mention smoking-related illnesses are a burden to the taxpayer. Food is trickier, I think. To bring morality into what and how we eat is a slippery slope--not hard to play out scenarios in which Little Debbie snack cakes and Toaster Strudels become contraband substances sold from the lockers of entrepreneurial middle-schoolers.

I'm wary of the medicine-ization of food, with "good" foods sanctioned and "bad" foods illegalized, partly because nutrition science has performed staggering about-faces in the past four decades. (See my colleague Kyle Kreiger's rant on the subject here.) To put the Twinkie on death row is risky if nutritionists don't have anything as reliable as DNA testing. Now there's a different kind of Twinkie defense.

In a related story, my friend Marvin Hymanson reports that there's a vegan/raw restaurant that has just opened its doors on the corner of 170th and Gulf Blvd. in Redington Beach. It's called Leafy Greens. Looking forward to checking it out, maybe after I eat a couple Ring Dings washed down with a Yoo-hoo.