Guy sues fast food restaurants for making him fat and unhealthy

The BBQ Pit
41

I’m fat as well. It’s a combination of being predisposed to a stocky body, eating the wrong things and not excersizing. I’m not gonna lie about that. I just think that weight problems are more multi-faceted than people seem to think.

"Americans can’t haul their butts to the grocery store and buy carrot sticks instead of Quarter Pounders? "

The key is time. Many people, because of working long hours, don’t have the time to cook, so even if they COULD go to the supermarket instead of a McDonald’s, it would simply save them time if they went to a fast food place. This is especially true if they have children. Is this always a legit excuse though? Nope. Does it apply to eveyone who frequents fast food places? Nope. It’s just something that needs to be considered.

One other problem (and this is with all foods) is that people are indeed either not told EVERYTHING about what’s in what they eat and drink. I mean, did you know that Starbucks uses pus for their milk?

[Early on the brisk morning of March 1, Debbi Shoval and her partner stood outside of a neighborhood Starbucks and handed out leaflets.

Shoval explained that there are several complaints against Starbucks. The first: Most Starbucks still use milk from cows that have been injected with rBGH – Monsanto’s sketchy bovine growth hormone – which unnaturally forces cows to produce more milk. The resulting milk contains bacteria, antibiotics and pus.

That’s right. Pus.](http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=2170)

I don’t think that’s in their nutritional files…and that’s just Starbucks. Don’t get me started on say…KFC, McDonald’s and the like.

So, even if the companies (not just fast food) DO give info on their products, they clearly don’t tell you everything, so even if there IS a choice, it isn’t quite as much of a choice as people like to think.

As for me, I rarely eat at fast food places anymore and I NEVER go to Starbucks. As for the guy, he can go fuck himself. It looks to me like he’s all he’s got anyway! Despite the fact that companies are faaaaar from innocent, any assnugget with a microbrain can see that Fast Food=BAD FOR YOU. If he were being lied to, like some people filing similar lawsuits because they were told that their fries would have vegetable oil instead of animal fat when it turned out to be the latter, then I can see it. But, I think it’s just finger pointing on his part and I think it’s sad.

Now, I’m gonna sue the SMDB, Livejournal, my web host, the ENTIRE internet, my sony playstation, my video games and ramen noodles because I’m a chubby! :b

42

The difference is that the tobacco companies flat out lied about the tobacco products causing ailments. In front of Congress, with a straight face. Add the admission of addiction-inducing additives to cigarettes, and they will pay for the lie practically forever.

The fast food chains made no such claims, except probably for the breaded chicken, that the foods are 100 percent healthy.

43

The milk pus is from Mastitis infections, which cows with rBGH added are at a higher risk for. Farmers counter with massive antibiotics, so the pus level is probably only slightly higher. Dairies will not accept milk with high Somatic cell counts (pus). I assume pus is in all milk, as some cow will probably be infected on the farm and not noticed yet when milked, and the ratio of pus to milk is not high enough to raise alarms. (anyone who has worked in a grocery store knows that food has all sorts of nasty crap in it).

What you need to be worried about is two-fold. First, rBGH works by stimulating the cow via Insulin-Like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1). Humans also use IGF-1, and the two are biochemically identical. IGF-1 stimulates cell division, and can survive pasteurization and digestion, and will be absorbed via the intestine. This could lead to increased cell division, which may cause tumors to form. Evidence is still shakey but scary. Problem 2 is the massive amount of antibiotics in the milk. Milk is supposed to be checked for that, but not all antibiotics fall under the checklist and many get by inspection. Increases in antibiotics in your food can lead to weakening of your immune system, and increase suseptability to diseases. That is a BAD thing.
rBGH links (some of these might be slightly biased sites)
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/biotech/bghback.htm
http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/john.rose/rbgh.html
http://www.sumeria.net/anim/bgh.html
http://www.lightparty.com/Health/DangerBGHMilk.html

44

Boy, that’s a real conundrum capacitor.

I mean, couldn’t it be argued that Mickey D’s, Burger king, et al, all hid the dangers of fat, sodium, and what have you, from the public out of a fear that the truth would hurt sales?

They knew it was bad, and not only didn’t they do anything to stop it, they promoted it.

In a sense, isn’t that what the tobacco people did- negate the real risk?

I also wonder about that in terms of the addiction thing. Again, couldn’t it be argued that Coke, Pepsi, and the others, put an addictive ingredient- caffeine- into their product to boost sales, even when they knew it was harmful?

Where’s the liability for that?

In both of those cases, I can actually see where people could make an argument, especially when the precedent has been made.

I guess that’s why I’m troubled with the precedent to begin with-- once you open that door, it’s a bitch getting it closed.

45

Ummmm…have you been to a grocery store lately? There are alot of ground beefs you can buy. I find 74%, 80%, 90%, and 96% lean. Notice if you will the price per pound of those ground beef purchases. The 96% surely tastes much better to me. Far less of it cooks off when I grill or skillet the burger, it retains its weight after cooking much better. It’s more expensive because it’s harder to produce, it’s that simple.

Now consider the McDonald’s quarter-pounder. Much of that cooks off, so that the 1/4 pound of beef turns into a smaller burger than 1/4 lb. of my 96% lean ground beef turns into when cooked. Since 74% beef is far less expensive (at least $1 per pound less expensive at the grocery store) than 96% beef, this is a cost factor that impacts the cost of the burger. Frankly, 96% lean ground beef is a luxury that a few people can afford because they have nice monthly incomes that allow them to budget an extra $10-20 dollars into their ground beef grocery purchases per month. (I’ve lived on some rather tight food budgets before, and am doing so currently, and the 74% beef remains one of the single most cost-effective meal options available for people who cannot live on Ramen noodles alone.)

Suppose that McDonald’s were to switch to 96% lean ground beef. Their burgers would be more expensive, albeit tastier and larger, and they would no longer retain the market position of being the low-cost lunch option that they presently are for most of us. Do you suppose to dictate to stockholders and other investors what their policy should be, though it’s their money on the line not yours?

If you want 96% lean, this is a luxury in which you are free to indulge by purchasing the beef at your local store and preparing it yourself. You know what you’re getting at McDonald’s, it’s your choice to go there. If you want a lean burger, go to a better restaurant and buy it. Or brown bag your lunch. The cost of production is a fact of life, not something for you to wave your hand and say “this should be different.”

46

I am 100% against the tobacco lawsuits. I am a former smoker. I used my freewill to light up. And when it got bad, I used my freewill, and a lot of perserverence, to stop.

But I knew that smoking was bad for me when I started. And I was 10 years old. I knew the risks. IMO, anyone who says they didn’t know that smoking had health risks is lying through their fucking teeth. Same with this suit. These asshats are lying. They KNEW what they were doing.

47

Could you expound on this a bit?

48

Well, even without seeing the complaint yet, I smell our old friend 12(b)(6). Pretrial motion for failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted. If this is federal court.

If it’s state court, fear not, there’s a state law in the state’s rules of civil procedure that functions just like 12(b)(6), it might even be more strict than the FRCP.

From the synopsis provided, it looks like it could only possibly be a negligence or products liability action. Since I don’t take products liability until the fall semester, I can’t say for sure what the merits of the action are under that theory. I can say that such unorthodox civil actions that lack much support in case law are prime candidates for a 12(b)(6) dismissal.

49

I am opposed to the tobacco lawsuits, alcohol lawsuits, and fast-food restaurant lawsuits. Know the risks and then live your life.

Personally, I think we should file a class action lawsuit against law schools for not capping their enrollments and thus creating a glut of lawyers. Lawyers are constantly trying to create a new revenue stream because there are too many of them.

50

This lawsuit breaks new ground! With this filing, the jury will be asked to believe:
-McDonald’s customers are too stupid to make rational decisions
-personal responsibility does not exist
-your own gluttony should be rewarded
I think the suit should be expanded to include:
-the advertising agencies that make the fast-food ads-they should show the obese customers that result from consumption of fast food!
-the cities that granted permission for the fast food pushers to operate
-the doctors, who should have advised their obese patients against eating the fastfood
Really, I am overjoyed…I hope this will expand to the point where the courts will be clogged. Then the whole rotten legal system will grind to a halt. Then we can seriously consider the wisdom of tort reform. I also think that (akin to the anti-gun lagislation) that we should have a “bg mack buyback program”-the government should pay people to sell their big mac burgers to the government. That shopuld reduce the availability of thei deadly fast food!

51

You’d be surprised.

My grandparents are extremely close friends of the former CEO of Philip Morris and his wife. Both of them are chain smokers. Both of them are highly intelligent people. Yet both of them insist that they have been unfairly persecuted for years, because smoking does absolutely no harm whatsoever to a smoker’s health.

YMMV.

52

Your GP’s are chainsmokers? Or the CEO and his wife.

If your GP’s are as old as my GP’s, than that is more understandable. However, if you under the age of 60…

53

The CEO and his wife are both chainsmokers. They are in their 70s.

54

I see the future:

Scenario One

McD Clerk: I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t sell you a burger and fries. Would you like a salad and a grilled chicken sandwich instead?

Customer: What?! Why not?

McD Clerk: You’re obese, sir. McDonald’s can’t risk the liability of letting you get any fatter.

Customer: What right do you have to dictate what I eat?

McD Clerk: I’m sorry, sir. Would you like that salad and sandwich?

Scenario Two

Customer: I’d like a large chocolate shake, please.

McD Clerk: Here’s a small chocolate shake. That’ll be $1.39.

Customer: But I wanted a large shake.

McD Clerk: Yeah, but you look like you’re packing on a little weight. A small shake would be better for you.

Customer: But I’ve lost fifty pounds in the last year. I wanted to treat myself on my birthday! I was skimping for the last two days to be able to afford this treat.

McD Clerk: Sorry, ma’am. McDonald’s has to protect itself from overweight people who might sue us if we let them buy from us.

55

Is anyone else reminded of this Onion article? I laughed when it first came out, but as usual, the satire’s so sharp it becomes real life soon.

Hershey’s Ordered to Pay Obese Americans $135 Billion

56

i) IMHO, it’s reasonable to regulate products that are both harmful and physically addictive more stringently than those that are just harmful (e.g. Big Macs) or just addictive (e.g. coffee).

Physical addiction substantially reduces one’s ability to make a free choice to abandon use of the harmful product.

ii) Many Americans got addicted to cigarettes at ages when they legally had no business making the choice to start smoking. (I know I’m gonna hear about this, but why should cigarettes be any different from sex?)

This was helped along by a certain amount of marketing aimed at kids - IIRC, this was documented by the stuff discovered in the tobacco companies’ files. And many of us are old enough to remember Joe Camel.

At any rate, when these people got to the age when they were legally entitled to decide whether to risk addiction to tobacco, they were already addicted, so the free-choice element was already gone.

This doesn’t happen with cheeseburgers, which are at most psychologically addictive, and even that depends on your definition. While I am dead set against the right of companies to direct advertising at kids for stuff that’s bad for them, the reality is that the kids can learn new habits once they’re 18; it’ll just be harder than it would have been otherwise.

iii) The tobacco companies lied about the dangers of their product, as other posters have pointed out. Their execs stood up in front of Congress, raised their right hands, and swore that their products weren’t addictive. That they knew otherwise also came out in discovery. They lied about other dangers of their product over the years too.

It’s not an affirmative defense to say, “you shouldn’t have believed us, because lots of other people were telling you we were lying.”

As has been said already, MickeyD’s makes no health claims about its products.

Alcohol got hit earlier, and in another way - at the retail level. Bartenders who kept on serving their customers after they were obviously sloshed, and didn’t try to take their car keys from them, got sued by the survivors of people who got killed by the drunk drivers.

The survivors won. That’s why you see all sorts of beer-company ads mentioning drinking responsibly, using designated drivers, and all that.

About a decade ago, Ted Kennedy and Strom Thurmond united on a bill to ban alcohol advertising from the public airwaves. Unfortunately (IMHO, anyway), it didn’t pass.

I don’t do much fast-fooding these days, so I’m not sure about the big posters in the fast-food joints. But they will all make the nutritional info available to you on request, generally on a little flyer you can take home with you. And of course, it’s on their websites. So if anyone wants to know, all they have to do is ask.

Which was definitely not the case with Big Tobacco for all those decades.

So I think the distinctions between tobacco’s situation and the fast food industry’s, are many and strong. I have to regard it as complete bullshit that “it happened to tobacco, so Burger King and Taco Bell are next.”

57

QUOTE]*Originally posted by lurkernomore *
Caesar Barber shoulda had a Caesar SALAD once in a while.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, but do you know how many calories are in a Caesar Salad?
(About 400 in a Wendy’s Caesar Side Salad with Dressing, see http://www.wendys.com/nutrition_guide.pdf)

Note: this doesn’t mean I support this CoS lawsuit.

P.S. Bernse, your last little comment had me laughing out loud at the office. I think it’s worth a shot.

58

Interesting how all of you can see that this is ridiculous lawsuit, but YOU DON’T KNOW IF HIS OBESITY IS DUE TO SOME GENETIC/METABOLIC ABNORMALITY. You actually blame him for his problem.

It seems to me that many people on this board assume that more than a small percentage of overweight people are not responsible for their weight–they can’t help but eat those bad things or that even if they eat good things an exercise they can still be overweight.

Weird.

59

Interesting how all of you can see that this is ridiculous lawsuit, but YOU DON’T KNOW IF HIS OBESITY IS DUE TO SOME GENETIC/METABOLIC ABNORMALITY. You actually blame him for his problem.

It seems to me that many people on this board assume that more than a small percentage of overweight people are not responsible for their weight–they can’t help but eat those bad things or that even if they eat good things an exercise they can still be overweight.

Weird.

60

Well if it is, that makes the lawsuit even more ridiculous. He might as well sue his parents for having the genetics to pass such a condition on to him.

The man in question blames his obesity on eating bad foods. Why should we not do the same?