Fast-Food Foolishness
America is busting out all over: Since the 1980s, the number of overweight adults has doubled to 38.9 million. Kids are in even worse shape -- almost 9 million are overweight. But is threatening fast-food companies with lawsuits really the right way to stop the fat epidemic?
After they successfully hit up the tobacco industry for billions, trial lawyers started looking for an even juicier target. Now they think they’ve found it in McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and other fast-food providers.
Public interest groups have railed for years in futile fashion about junk food. But trial lawyers are looking to bring home the bacon. They reckon that with an estimated 300,000 deaths a year associated with excess weight, they can make allegations about fast food’s dangers and deceptions similar to the ones they used to persuade jurors to award giant judgments against the makers of cigarettes.
At a recent conference at Northeastern University, professor John Banzhaf, who led the legal assault on big tobacco, helped make the case against the junk food industry -- but only after washing down a chocolate fudge brownie with a Diet Coke, according to the Wall Street Journal. Banzhaf said multiple lawsuits had been or would be filed against the industry.
Right now, he’s demanding that McDonald’s, KFC, Taco Bell and Burger King, among others, put warning labels on everything from nachos to burgers, arguing that they can lead to severe addiction. To buttress this claim, he refers to a February article in New Scientist -- which is not a peer-reviewed journal -- asserting that fast food has addictive properties similar to nicotine and heroin.
Meanwhile, Kraft Foods, which makes Oscar Mayer meats, Oreo cookies and other products, said Tuesday that it would reduce its snack food serving sizes -- but retain their prices -- and halt its school marketing campaigns. The company said it acted for its customers’ good, not necessarily to avert obesity suits. A Florida lawmaker also wants Congress to pass his bill to fend off fast-food lawsuits.
The basic argument of fast-food foes is that consumers are simply too dumb to resist the siren call of the industry. America’s youth, so the thinking goes, is being corrupted by the temptation of high-fat, salt-laden food that appeals to the palate but can ruin health.
If kids are chowing down to excess on junk food, though, aren’t their parents responsible for cracking down? And if parents or other grown-ups overindulge, isn’t it their fault, not that of the purveyors of fast food? Millions of harried Americans rely on swift provisions and manage their calories too. Why boost their food bills because of legal jousting? People shouldn’t get stuffed, but this line of litigation should.
