Rotunda Rsi, Dumbo dAs

[Streetstraw 0]

FAT - Is Fat the Next Tobacco?

For Big Food, supersizing America is becoming a big headache.

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I've heard one guru disliked overweight disciples.

Avoiding offense, respectfully encourage overweight vaisnavas to...

increase their spiritual while reducing their material.

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FORTUNE

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

By Roger Parloff

 

On August 3, 2000, parody newspaper The Onion ran a joke article under the headline Hershey's Ordered to Pay Obese Americans $135 Billion. The hypothesized class-action lawsuit said that Hershey "knowingly and willfully" marketed to children "rich, fatty candy bars containing chocolate and other ingredients of negligible nutritional value," while "spiking" them with "peanuts, crisped rice, and caramel to increase consumer appeal."

 

Some joke. Last summer New York City attorney Sam Hirsch filed a strikingly similar suit--against McDonald's--on behalf of a class of obese and overweight children. He alleged that the fast-food chain "negligently, recklessly, carelessly and/or intentionally" markets to children food products that are "high in fat, salt, sugar, and cholesterol" while failing to warn of those ingredients' links to "obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes, elevated cholesterol intake, related cancers," and other conditions.

 

News of the lawsuit drew hoots of derision. But food industry executives aren't laughing--or shouldn't be. No matter what happens with Hirsch's suit, he has tapped into something very big. (Editor's note: After this story went to press, a federal judge dismissed the suit, but granted permission to refile, which Hirsch says he will do.) Seasoned lawyers from both sides of past mass-tort disputes agree that the years ahead hold serious tobacco-like litigation challenges for the food industry--challenges that extend beyond fast foods to snack foods, soft drinks, packaged foods, and dietary supplements. "The precedents, the ammo, the missiles are already there and waiting in a silo marked 'tobacco,' " says Victor Schwartz, general counsel of the American Tort Reform Association.

 

Junk food may not be addictive in the same way that tobacco is. But weight, once gained, is notoriously hard to lose, and childhood weight patterns strongly predict adult ones. Rates of overweight among small children--to whom junk-food companies aggressively market their products--have doubled since 1980; rates among adolescents have tripled. (See the following story for more on the fat epidemic.) In 1999 physicians began reporting an alarming rise in children of obesity-linked type 2 diabetes. Once an obese youngster develops diabetes, he or she will never get rid of it. That's a lot more irreversible than a smoking addiction.

 

Though many people recoil at the idea of obesity suits--eating habits are a matter of personal responsibility, they protest--tobacco precedents show that such qualms can be overcome. Yes, most people know that eating a Big Mac isn't the same as eating spinach salad, but most people knew that smoking was bad for them too. And yes, diet is only one risk factor out of many that contribute to obesity, but smoking is just one risk factor for diseases for which tobacco companies were forced to fork over reimbursement to Medicaid. (Industry's share of blame was statistically estimated and then divvied up among companies by market share.) Tobacco companies eventually agreed to pay $246 billion to states, and juries are now ordering them to pay individual smokers eight-digit verdicts too.

 

By Surgeon General's estimate, public-health costs attributable to overweight and obesity now come to about $117 billion/year--fast approaching $140 billion stemming from smoking. Suing Big Food offers allures to contingency-fee lawyers that rival those of Big Tobacco, and implications of that are pretty easy to foresee. While the food industry is not apt to be socked with anything like penalties that hit tobacco, companies will face consumer-protection suits that might cost them many tens of millions of dollars and force them to significantly change marketing practices.

 

The triggering event occurred in December 2001. That's when the Surgeon General, observing that about 300,000 deaths per year are now associated with overweight and obesity, warned that those conditions might soon cause as much preventable disease and death as smoking. The report prompted journalists to call John Banzhaf III, antismoking activist and law professor at George Washington University School of Law, to see whether tobacco-style litigation might be in the offing. "I said, 'Well, no, there are important differences,' " Banzhaf recalls. But even as he talked, he began to change his mind.

 

Another key academic strategist in tobacco wars, Northeastern University law professor Richard Daynard, was soon drawn into the fray. At a conference last April to discuss Marion Nestle's new book, Food Politics, he was asked to talk about possible obesity-related litigation. (Nestle, who chairs the nutrition department at New York University and whose name is pronounced NESSel, is not related to founders of the food company.) Daynard, like Banzhaf, at first saw no analogy to tobacco. But as he read Nestle's book, he, too, began to change his mind.

 

Here's Nestle's argument. For at least the past 50 years public-health authorities have wanted to deliver a simple, urgent message to American people: Eat less. They have been thwarted from doing so, however, by political pressure from the food industry. The meat industry alone spends millions a year on lobbying, apparently with great success. Instead of forthrightly saying, "Eat less red meat," government health authorities are forced to say, "Eat more lean meat." Food companies compound the confusion by advertising that their products can be "part of a balanced and nutritional diet," even though they know that their products are not typically consumed that way. Any food can theoretically be part of a balanced diet if you keep the portions tiny enough and eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and grains.

 

As Daynard well knew, advertising claims that are literally true, but misleading when viewed in a real-world context, can violate state consumer-protection laws. In some states, like California, plaintiffs can force companies to disgorge all profits attributable to advertising that employs such statements, and the plaintiff can win without having to prove that even a single individual was actually tricked by the statement.

 

The idea of bringing such suits against the food industry is not unprecedented. In 1983, for instance, the California supreme court greenlighted a suit brought by an advocacy group against General Foods over the way such breakfast cereals as Sugar Crisp and Cocoa Pebbles--which contain 38% to 50% sugar by weight--were being marketed to children. The plaintiffs argued that "although promoted and labeled as 'cereals,'" the products "are in fact more accurately described as sugar products, or candies." The court suggested that ads even implicitly claiming that such products were nutritious or healthful were plausible lawsuit targets. (After the ruling, the case settled.)

 

Last July, Daynard attended an informal meeting of lawyers and public-health advocates in Banzhaf's office in Washington. "The first question at John's meeting was, 'Is there a there there?' " Daynard recalls. "What persuaded us was, in a sense, the media. This thing is so radioactive in terms of media attention that cases will bring in other lawyers and bring in other cases."

 

Later that month a lawyer who'd never heard of Banzhaf or Daynard crashed their party. Sam Hirsch, who runs his own small practice in New York City, had become interested in food issues after an overweight associate referred to a burger as a "fat bomb." Though Hirsch, 54, had never brought a class action, he now filed two, one in Brooklyn and another in the Bronx. The suits, brought on behalf of classes of obese people, named McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, and Wendy's as defendants.

From Feb. 3, 2003 Issue Article

[Guest guest]

Speaking about suits and ties between certain substances and disease, it may interest you that antibiotics are the cause of AIDS. I expect the sufferers to sue the pharmaboys, whose pernicious drugs cause countless iatrogenic diseases. The proof is found in their own records, so that should not pose a problem. Open any pharmacopeia and read the side-effects of any drug. The potential damage to the pharmaceutical industry may be so big, we ca finally put them out of business.

The Bhagavatam lists three types of reatment, the heavenly, the human and the demonic. The heavenly it describes in 1/5/33, "Oh good soul, does not a thing, when applied therapeutically, cure a disease that was caused by that very same thing?"

The human is using herbs, baths, massage and diet.

The hellish or demonic is using heavy drugs, poisoning the people, knives and operations and protheses. It is obvious that the medical establishment is using hellish means, nt caring for people but only for profit.

Contrary to the food industry or the tobacco boys, this stuff is not consumed voluntarily. Failure of duty to care is neglect and is enough ground to not only sue them, but sue them all the way to their emperor's clothes. IOW, SUE THE PANTS OFF THEM!

A case like that may begin in Australia, where a large group of gays is wanting to sue them for prescribing antibiotics as prophylactics, over periods ranging from six to sixteen years. They consumed upto six different kinds every day, prescribed by their doctors. That will be the beginning of the end for the pharmaboys.

Vaikunthanath das Kaviraj.

[Guest guest]

I've heard the theory that it is a man made virus. Its purpose was to kill off large portions of the planet given overpopulation etc...