When a Macca's opened not far from my house, I panicked. My kids were still little and I worried about the impact of golden arches on their tiny bodies.

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Sure, I was the kind of mother who could easily say no to whingeing children, but how much easier is it if you don't have to have that conversation in the first place.

Now it turns out that I am joined on my own personal crusade (which included walking around the long way) by folks all over the world.

They want their local areas to just say no to fast food outlets for very good reasons.

Gateshead Council, in England's north-east, banned any existing non-fast-food commercial property from being converted into a hot fast-food takeaway.

What happened next? British researchers found that those planning policies led to fewer overweight and obese children in that area.

They even compared the health of kids from one area to others which had much higher densities of fast food outlets, just to make sure their evidence stacked up. It did.

Australians are good at that, too. I came across Monash University's Elizabeth Taylor's work which documents protests against fastfoodification in Ballarat as early as 1977 and Victoria's Clifton Hill in 1987.

The best known of all the resident fightbacks is, as Taylor writes, was the "Mountains against McDonald's" campaign by NSW Blue Mountains groups against three proposed McDonald's outlets in the region between 1995 and 2003.

Now those campaigns are on the rise again. Proposals for two McDonald's outlets in suburban Sydney are facing backlash over potential noise impacts, "antisocial behaviour", traffic congestion and perceived health risks. Nearly 4000 people signed a petition in opposition to these developments.

In Tamworth, the vibe is so similar. Residents are not pleased at the prospect of a third Hungry........

© Canberra Times