Rereading your post now, I’m not sure if I was just whooshed or not.
So, there’s a genetic abnormality that makes someone eat a pound of McDonald’s french fries every week?
Good one!!! Can I borrow it?
Still learning how to eat more responsibly myself, and I need all the motivation I can get.
I’ve read this post five or six times, and I still can’t make heads or tails of it. It looks like the first and second paragraphs are making contradictory assertions. Jeanie, could you explain what you’re trying to say here?
The CEO and his wife are both chainsmokers. They are in their 70s.
And we know what sticklers for telling the truth tobacco CEO’s are.
Do you REALLY think a CEO of a tobacco company is going to tell you “of course cigarettes make you sick”?
There is no way you can have a brain and NOT know that inhaling smoke into your lungs, which are created to inhale air only, is harmful to your health.
This CEO buddy is lying through his teeth. What they do best.
Of course!
Although, upon further reflection, I’ve decided that the prosecution will probably call Grimace as a witness to attest that McDonald’s has been promoting obesity all along. (“Before Ronald offered me a job, I was a friggin’ smurf! I was a size -3! Now look at me! I look like a bean bag!”)
And then the Hamburgler to prove that McDonald’s encouraged people to steal fast-food hamburgers if they couldn’t afford to pay for them, just to maintain their addiction. Robble robble.
Tobacco, alcohol and now fast-food lawsuits: I’m against them all.
- Tobacco: I’m a “nicotine freak” also. My entire extended family smokes, yet even so my father told me when I was a teen-ager, “I hope you never start smoking because it’s almost impossible to quit.” I have books from the late 19th century which take it as a given that smoking is unhealthful. I don’t think it’s quite the demon it’s viewed as now, but any body who starts smoking knows–and knew way back when–that it wasn’t good for you.
- I can understand suing the drunk driver, but not suing the bar or bartender who served him. They’re not anybody’s mommy.
- Nobody has to go to a fast food (or, rather, junk-food) joint. You can pick up reasonably healthy items that don’t require cooking at the supermarket.
I’m getting disgusted with the obese; not with the fact that they are obese–that’s their choice–but with the constant whining about it. “Society isn’t fair!” “I can’t find clothes in my size!” “It’s somebody else’s fault that I’m fat!” Good gods, put down the tub of ice cream and get off the damned couch, already!
I can get with you on the whining about society being unfair and blaming other people. However, it IS a pain in the ass to find clothes. And considering there is a fashion industry out there who wants every penny they can get, they would be smart to listen to the millions and millions of fat people out there and design decent clothes.
Just because we’re fat doesn’t mean we don’t want to look as good as possible, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t have money to spend. “Fat” money will spend just as well as “thin” money last I checked.
WV_Woman: I’m afraid that I’ve been misinterpreted. I was saying that Americans aren’t generally able to choose between a product that kills people by the millions and a product that does the exact same thing that is exponentially less dangerous. For example, Americans can’t haul their butts to the grocery store and buy carrot sticks with an expiry date in the twentieth century for a lower price than ones coding next week. The government regulates the food industry - dangerous food is illegal, even in the home of the free.
Road Rash: You are partially correct, sir. The McLean burger did not sell. But the reason it did not sell is emphatically not because it was an inferior product. In fact, as I’ve already shown, it was superior to regular burgers in every way, including taste. The quality of a product doesn’t translate into sales: the marketing does. Think New Coke, friend. The answer lies in the marketing. People are trained since birth (like Pavlov’s dogs, only without bells) to make a correlation between how good a food is for you, and how good it tastes. Why else would people believe Cod Liver Oil is good for you? We’ve been programmed to believe that it’s impossible for a burger to both taste great and be less filling - Oops, less fattening. The fact that the McLean was marketed as a Lean burger spelled its doom. Had McDonald’s merely switched from their regular burgers to the lean kind, dollars to doughnuts say no one would have been able to tell the difference.
Rex Dart: Maybe I’m taking crazy pills here, but personally, I have a problem with a company trading millions of human lives for profit margins. I mean, is it me?
That aside, man, your whole post is based on a few false premises. Chiefly among them is your bizarre belief that McDonald’s is a low cost meal option. You tell me you’ve been on a tight budget. If this is really so, I can’t imagine how you’d justify claiming that McDonald’s, or any other restaurant, is a “low cost lunch”. Anyone who’s ever had to scrimp should know that making your own lunch is a zillion times less expensive. How on earth could you believe otherwise? Do you really believe that people will flock away from McDonalds in droves if their Quarter Pounder Meals are twenty cents more expensive? That’s insane!
Cite please? I keep hearing smokers say that smoking is more addictive than heroin. Now it has been elevated to the most addictive substance on earth. I thought that crack that can hook with one joint was more addictive.
{personal story}
When I was growing up both of my parents smoked. A lot. My dad was three packs a day of unfiltered Camels (My smoking friends tell me that this is the last step before people start injecting nicotine into their veins.) My mother was a lightweight at only about 2 1/2 packs of Kools or Salems a day. In 1956 the state of California put an extra penny tax on a pack of cigs. Both of my parents,* independently of each other,* decided to quit. They both quit cold turkey. Neither one of them ever smoked again. Now unless someone can show me a junkie that has quit smack cold turkey because his pusher put in a one penny price increase I’m not buying the more addictive/most addictive arguement.
Your mother and Grandmother must have been child brides. As late as the mid to late fifties You could turn up ads like “More doctors smoke Camels than any other brand!” (The family went to a 50’s cafe the other week, this exact ad was posted on the wall)
So there are smokers out there right now who could have started during this time. After all IIRC the first surgeons general’s warning didn’t come until 1962.
Don’t get me wrong, I wish tobacco was on the endangered species list
If the court rules that fast food causes addiction to fast food, will the government consider obese people to be disabled? Then the other travesty (THES “Americans With Disabilities Act” will take effect-Caeser will get government funded housing, wheelchair etc.). Also, will “detox” centers for the fast food “addicts” be st up?
This is wonderful…it should be called the “lawyers employment act”!!
What’s really sad is, he’ll probably get a decent settlement out of it. It’s not like there aren’t precedents for this sort of thing.
and then he’ll eat more fast food, have his 3rd heart attack and die!!!
Rex: I was incorrect about my “20 cents more expensive” burger, thing. Here are the actual numbers:
A Pound of Medium Ground Beef bought at cost is $2.39
A Pound of Extra Lean Ground Beef bought at cost is $2.80
A difference of $0.41.
Let’s assume that a regular burger at a fast food restaurant is 2 oz. The price difference between a 2 oz Medium GB burger and a 2 oz XLean GB burger is 5 cents. Factor in the fact that less XLean GB is required to make the same amount of burger, and the price difference drops to 4 cents.
Do you seriously believe that a difference of four cents is in any way a factor in the fast food companies’ refusal to make their product less dangerous?
…and to paraphrase Ebeneezer Scrooge, he should die now and decrease the surplus population! He alone is responsible for his condition, and should take the consequences!
Bah, Humbug!!
When my friend who travels a lot - thus necessitating a lot of fast food - had a heart attack at age 35 I was considering filing a lawsuit like this one. I could not bring myself to be part of the problem and he was not that interested in pursuing it. [sub]Oh man, if this lawyer makes a billion dollars like the tobacco lawyers did, I am a moron.[/sub]
There is NO significant difference between this lawsuit and the tobacco lawsuits. Addictive? Food is essential.
Next, or already in progress: alcohol, SUVs, sports cars, scuba gear, skis, swimming pools, etc… [Cue “Beautiful World” by Devo]
“We’re coming out!” - Al Pacino in Devil’s Advocate “We’re already out in force!” - Beagle
Actually, I blame him for blaming others for his problem. And for using the court to try to extort money for it.
Ask, and ye shall recieve!
http://www.nida.nih.gov/researchreports/nicotine/nicotine2.html#addictive
http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/pubs/books/nicotine/2-physical.htm
http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic1642.htm
One from the Univeristy of Minnesota
small hijack …
I definitely believe that nicotine indeed is the most addictive substance on earth, but how come some people can smoke and never get addicted and others are hooked after the first one?
I used to smoke back in 1998. It wasn’t an every day thing, I would basically buy a pack, smoke 'em all in oh, 2 days and then not smoke again for another 3 weeks or so.
I enjoyed smoking but I never “needed” a cigarette, ya know?
On second thought, maybe for some people to get addicted to nicotine it takes regular exposure to it.
I’m not going to test this, though, although there are times I really want a cigarette.
Sorry, how abot we get someone in here who actualy quit both Cigarettes and a Narcotic and they can tell us which was harder. Wether something is more potent does not make it more addictive.