Would you like fries with your lawsuit?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Since WHEN have they portrayed their food as healthy? I thought that the whole thing behind “Extra Value” and such was that it was CHEAP!!!
Scylla’s point is a good one. There is nothing inherently wrong with cruising through McDonald’s to pick up a Big Mac and fries for lunch.
But the guy in the suit says he did it 4 or 5 times a week. That’s a lot of Big Macs and fries. And a lot of extra calories and fat grams.
The problem here is not practicing moderation. Sure, drive through fast food is convenient, cheap and fast. But that doesn’t mean they drove you to do it repeatedly, until you got unhealthy enough to have a heart attack.
My position on nutrition is this - I don’t think the average American has enough knowledge on what constitutes “good nutrition” and “portion control”. So perhaps people are unaware just HOW bad eating fast food and other high calorie foods are. Does that make it McDonald’s fault? Nope.
In my book, we ought to take the money that’s about to be spent on legal fees, and develop some sort of nutrition education program. All I recall from my school days was a few week session in health class where we learned the 4 food groups. We did NOT learn how to shop & dine out healthily, we did not learn which foods can be healthy, and which foods should be limited, etc.
Much of my past weight problem was not knowing just how much excess food I was actually eating. Well, that, and I was a couch potato, but the calories in is certainly one of the main components!
I would also like to add that the nutrional information for a lot of fast food restuarants are inside the restuarant.
Oh but wait, that would require Chester Mcfatalot to get off his wide butt and walk.
Ha, ha! Cold turkey! I get it! No whoosh here, no sir!
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Idiocy on a stick, this is. A big, meaty chunk of idiocy drenched in some nice, flavored breading, fried to perfection, and…oh…Sorry, got carried away there for a sec.
Yeah, this lawsuit is ridiculous. Sadly, I think the plaintiffs have better than the proverbial snowball’s (or, more appropriately, Sno-Cone’s) chance in hell of getting their case heard & getting a judgement in their favor.
Keep those dollars rolling in.
I want to know why supermarkets weren’t named in the lawsuits. They have aisle after aisle of hamburgers, french fries, enormous tubs of ice cream, cans of corned beef hash, Spam, cheese, pounds & pounds of butter and even animal lard. If you’re not willing to do your own cooking, you can live off of salty, fatty, cholesterol-laden tv dinners. Aren’t supermarkets “knowingly serving meals that cause obesity and disease”, too?
Since this is Great Debates, won’t someone who sees potential merit in this case step forward and post?
I’m genuinely interested in the other side of this debate.
Hell, my mother occasionally served a meal that would cause obesity and disease… if we ate it every freaking night of the weak.
It’s one thing to eat yourself into an early grave, it’s quite another to sue the restaurant that served said food. I wonder if we’ll see somebody addicted to shellfish suing Red Lobster for suing him food he ordered that was unhealthy for him.
P.S. If McDonalds had an Add campaign like Subway did I can understand his idiocy, but McDonalds (aside from their Salads) has never claimed to serve healthy food, they just claim to serve tasty food. I guess Mr. Obese skipped school the day they were teaching about the food pyramid.
And who exactly can he sue becasue of his falilure to exercise? I mean food and activity go hand in hand. I would maintain that youprobably can eat at those restaurants 4-5 times a week if you also don’t spend the rest of your time posting on message boards and watching Hogan’s Heroes re-runs.
I’ve definitely heard food addicts say that it doesn’t matter what food it is, its how you approach the food, but when I have been “in the food” it’s using high fat and high sugar foods.
My point, however, is that even though I am an addict, it’s still MY responsibiilty to overcome that addiction. If I choose to indulge my laziness or sweet tooth or whatever, it’s making a choice that that is more important than being healthy. If the addiction is skewing that to where it is no longer a choice, but a compulsion, you will know you need to address that.
There has to be an argument that no reasonable person would be unaware that fast food is not good for you. Hearing it from the doctor officially couldn’t have been news to these people.
New York Post
<i>There has to be an argument that no reasonable person would be unaware that fast food is not good for you. Hearing it from the doctor officially couldn’t have been news to these people.</i>
I’m sure there is, but it didn’t work during the tabacco lawsuits, and it’s not as if people thought tobacco was healthy up until the lawsuits began.
I don’t see any merit in this case. But I also don’t see any merit in the tobacco lawsuits. I don’t see any fundamental difference between the tobacco lawsuits and the fast-food lawsuit. (If someone could show that they were influenced to believe that smoking was not harmful by tobacco company propaganda, there might be a difference - I don’t believe this is a factor).
I’m not a lawyer, but…
If I were working for the defense, I’d ask the plaintiff to produce receipts for visits by him to each of the fast-food restaurants he’s naming in his lawsuit. Multiple receipts, actually, since his claims state that he “frequented” these fast-food places. Now, if he has no receipts, then hopefully a smart judge would toss the whole shebang out for sheer lunacy - but maybe to prevent it from getting even further, this would help.
Or maybe not.
Lawsuits like this are an embarassment to our legal system. However, the shameful thing is this guy might actually have a chance to win his case. Remember that bimbo that spilled coffee on herself and then eventually won against Mcdonalds? How many people thought that case would win? I certainly didn’t and it ended up netting her a couple million.
It’s pretty obvious fast food is bad for someone. Just take a look at the dripping grease off that whopper next time or the salty/greasy fries. Not to mention that everyone I know that eats fast food daily is a complete fatty.
Yes, maybe not. This was actually a major issue in the lawsuit against the gun manufacturers - could the plaintiffs identify the manufacturers of the specific guns that they claim were irresponsibly distributed and caused the damage? Judge ruled that they don’t have to. So the plaintiffs here too might not have to either - particularly if the suit is granted class-action status, as per the lawyer’s efforts.
It seems to me that the main reason the suit is likely to fail is not so much that its claims far surpass that of other successful lawsuits - rather it is the subjective nature of legal rulings. I suspect that the type of rulings that are made against the tobacco and gun BAD GUYS will not be made against the more popular food industry.
It doesn’t ever get old, does it?
Feistymongol, could you please tell us everything you know about that case? I’d be curious to hear the details of the suit and the judgement.
McFacts about the McDonalds Coffee Lawsuit (hey, I didn’t make it up, its the name of the page). If you do some board searches or even web searches on this case, you can find out many more facts on it.
I just ate a whole pint of Ben & Jerry’s, and couldn’t stop myself . . .
Those damn hippies are gonna pay!!!
Seriously, people - this is getting ridiculous. I have a small iota of empathy for some of the tobacco plaintiffs - while I believe in personal responsibility, I am a light smoker, and know how hard it is to quit - but suing fast food institutions for your own laziness and lack of self-control . . .
I know if I don’t have a cigarette for a few hours, I have a physical reaction that drives me to want to smoke. It’s a physical addiction, just like heroin, or coke - it’s not healthy to keep using the drug, but it can also be very physically painful to stop.
But, it’s not like the plaintiff would suffer physical withdrawal symptoms if he ate a fing carrot stick every once in a while and laid off the cheeseburgers for one damn meal. If he has a problem, it’s that his gluttony is a symptom his lack of self-control, or at worst, possibly a psychological condition. Suing the fast food companies for one’s compulsion is like a person with OCD suing Dial, Dove, and Irish fing Spring becuase they wash their hands every five minutes.
FWIW.