At last, a lawsuit for the rest of us. If you are one of those unfortunate Americans who has never been part of a class-action suit against somebody with a lot of money, maybe this one is for you.
About a half-dozen class-action lawsuits have been filed by overweight people against the fast-food industry.
Each claims that the industry lured the hefty plaintiffs into obesity by pushing food loaded with salt, sugar, starch, saturated fat, cholesterol and other tasty stuff that is not good for you when consumed in mass quantities. The plaintiffs could not help themselves, the suits contend. The industry made them do themselves wrong.
People used to say “the devil made me do it” when they did something they knew they should not do. But I guess you can’t sue Satan.
What’s with these folks? Old-fashioned common sense tells me that they don’t need a lawyer. They need some willpower.
They need to try an exercise that my father taught me. “Push yourself away from the table,” he would say.
Dad lived to age 87. Not bad. He didn’t smoke either. For several decades he rode a bicycle to work every day. Had he been born later, he might have taken the bus to work and later sued the transportation company for his flabby hips.
Self-control and other forms of personal responsibility have fallen out of vogue in today’s litigious age because there is always someone else to blame for our own bad habits.
Lawsuits against cigarette companies would open the floodgates on frivolous lawsuits, the doomsayers warned, and some plaintiff lawyers are determined to prove them right.
In one lawsuit, a company is alleged to have given incorrect disclosure information on the fat and calorie content of its “diet” ice cream–as if diet ice cream was not an oxymoron in itself, like “jumbo” shrimp.
Some Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and vegetarians sued McDonald’s for cooking its french fries with animal fat after allegedly saying the fries were cooked in vegetable oil. The plaintiffs settled out of court for $12 million, including $2.5 million in legal fees.
I don’t necessarily fault these folks. If they were told one thing and sold another as their suit claims, they were misled, pure and simple. But truth in advertising may not be enough to save you, Mr. or Ms. Food Seller. New research may make it easier for clever lawyers to portray fast food as a tobacco-like danger.
For example, the U.S. surgeon general has declared obesity to be rapidly surpassing tobacco as America’s No. 1 killer. His sensible remedy: Eat less and exercise more. But, ah, that would require personal responsibility, wouldn’t it?
Major fast-food chains already make nutrition information available on demand to anybody who wants it. The bigger question is, who wants it?
McDonald’s offers salads, for example, but they don’t fly out of their coolers nearly as briskly as the cheeseburgers fly off the grill. Whose fault is that? Are the consumers not voting with their appetites?
Memo to prospective jurors: Fight the impulse to kick a few dollars the way of sorrowful but, alas, weak-willed plaintiffs. The economical burgers and fries that you save may be your own.
And the fast-food industry may be asking for trouble, not with what they sell but with the way they sell it. The problem is contained in two words: “Supersize it.”
That’s the beckoning call of fast-food chains looking to gain a competitive edge with the impression that they are giving customers more for their money. Yes, they are giving you more sugar, fat, etc.
You can hardly buy a small popcorn or soft drink at the local Cineplex without the kid behind the counter informing you, “For only 50 cents more, you can get the jumbo size.”
And what’s up with the “Big Gulp” at convenience stores? Drinks should be human scale. Yet there is a market for such bucket-sized drinks, whether I approve or not.
The best solution is for people to make better choices, before some jury somewhere decides to make it for them.
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E-mail: cptime@aol.com
