For ages now, the fast food industry has advertised that their products were safe. They showed people happily chowing away on fat-laden burgers and lard-soaked fries. In fact, they STILL do this!
They even market their product to KIDS! Can you believe that? I mean, we all can see that Ronald McDonald is a ploy designed to get kids hooked on unhealthy food for the rest of their lives!
Then, they go and put “nutritional information” on their products to make it look like the death they are pandering is actually good for you, skewing the perception of the public is usually this simple.
All of this while deaths related to heart disease are higher than ever, the population is more out of shape than ever, and people are dying because of this.
We need to get a class action law suit against the fast food industry. They are selling death, and they have not come clean about how many people are dying from their products. They must be held accountable for this deception on a public we must protect from suuch insidious and unrevealing advertisement tactics.
What do you think we could get… Maybe 145 billion?
Yer pal,
Satan
TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Three months, one week, four days, 6 hours, 40 minutes and 50 seconds.
4091 cigarettes not smoked, saving $511.39.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 4 hours, 55 minutes.
Dog bites. Thousands of people, many of them innocent children, suffer from painful and debilitating dog bites every year. The amount of work lost anually must total several thousand hours. Additionally, think of the cost to the gov’t (Hah, that’s my money, not the gov’t’s) incurred by public health care. It’s gotta be several million bucks. I think the gov’t has a legitimate case to sue God for his obviously poorly designed and dangerous creation.
I don’t think anyone things McDonalds is good for you - but that doesn’t matter, they eat it because they think it’s convinient and tastes good, and they’ve been force-fed advertising.
I would love it if someone sued… peddlings to American’s worst traits (love of overly fatty, quick food) for profit is definately scummy.
Another example is anti-bacterial soap. Experts say it doesn’t make much of a difference, and it actually helps bacteria more than it hurts them. But commercials and others peddle to people’s fear of dirt, so people just gobble it up. People are stupid, what can I say…
I’m not law expert, though, but it seems you really couldn’t win a suits like these. After all, McDonalds does actually feed you, and anti-bacterial soap does actually clean you. Unlike cigarettes, they have a useful function.
But I’d still like to see something bad happen to those who exploit people… I liked the idea someone had on this message board before, of a “fat tax” (on food, not people). Fat shouldn’t be illegal, but it should be gently discouraged…
I’m with UncleBeer on this one. Just because it hurts you is no reason to sue. Cigarettes are created to cause addiction, and tobacco companies manufacture scientific tests to deny the obvious.
Fast food is affordable and reliable nourishment. Well, maybe it’s not all that nourishing, but the industry hardly denies that. But it’s not addictive. Anyone who is concerned about fast food for health reasons can just stop eating it. If people want to poison themselves with inactivity and horrendous food, then who am I to argue?
The problem that needs to be addressed is poverty and overwork. If parents have neither the time nor the money to prepare proper meals for their families, then fast food becomes a viable option. Get rid of the problem, and the fast food issue will take care of itself.
That insidious cola company has been deceiving the American and international public for decades, hiding behind the innocent look of it’s dewy, moisture drenched, cold bottle and pandering to children of all ages.
It needs to be sued for 300 billion! Anyone ever remember that famous junior high school science experiment? The one where the teacher takes a blob of chewed bubble gum - that indigestible, indestructible material of youthful joy - pops it into a test tube and pours in some pure coke syrup – the type mixed with soda water to make Coca Cola – and over the period of a few minutes it dissolves the gum!!
Think about that! What has this insidious material done to the stomachs and general health of millions?
To court, I say, to court! They’ll give us billions!!
Cecil did a column on this, and many smokers will talk of usefullness that comes from tobacco. Now, that isn’t to say that the negatives are not vastly outnumbering the positives, nor that there aren’t other ways to get the positives which do not involve tobacco, but the same argument could be made of fast food too, you know.
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To answer your first point, tobacco has been used way before there was even a word for addiction.
To your second point, even Cecil himself talked of the dubious nature of testing when it comes to second hand smoke research. We don’t complain that McDonalds isn’t giving us proper research on heart disease and the effects of high cholesterol on people, do we?
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Bullshit. I mentioned in the OP about how they thought adding ingredient labels to their products gave it the appearance of being good for you. The fast food industry tries to trot out things like the McLean to placate increasing pressure from consumer groups and dieticians who know the real facts behind what they serve up.
Those who complain “the tobacco companies did not talk about the dangers of their product” - a product with warnings right on every pack (I don’t see warning labels on Whoppers, do you?) should also complain that the fast food industry has not talked about the dangers of it’s products.
That’s because it’s patently absurd to expect them to do this. Hmm…
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Wanna back that assertion up with some facts? Many people have food addictions, and I’ll bet anything that the amount of people in this country who smoek are far outnumbered by the number of people who are overweight and have diets which are a probable cause of this condition.
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That’s nice. So you’re against the tobacco class action suit I assume, since you can change the above to that product. Right?
Yer pal,
Satan
I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Three months, one week, four days, 14 hours, 25 minutes and 3 seconds.
4104 cigarettes not smoked, saving $513.00.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 6 hours, 0 minutes.
Satan -
Although I suspect your OP is somewhat facetious, you touch on a subject I have long thought would be the Next Big Crusade - a Crusade Against Fat: fat foods, fat people. While those who are overweight will rightly claim that they have long suffered from disparagement and discrimination, it has to a certain degree been a guerilla war, not open warfare. The anti-smoking campaign moved from “smoking is bad for you” to “smokers are disgusting” a few years back. It was no longer the product or the habit that was vilified, but those engaged in it. Smokers became social pariahs. It was no longer impolite to openly criticize a smoker - not just if one objected to someone smoking in their presence, but to comment armed solely with the knowledge that a person smokes.
I foresee much the same campaign with obesity. It will change from comments behind a person’s back or comments in favor of a more healthful lifestyle to the same sort of open season/fair game that is directed at smokers. In stead of an impolite “you should lose weight”, it will be acceptable to engage in openly rude, hostile comments like “you’re disgusting” or “how can you just stuff your face like that, don’t you know how bad that is for you”. Those engaged in the Crusade will fight from the same morally-superior bastion from which they fought the Smoking Crusade. Like the Smoking Crusade, it will be a moral judgement dressed as a public health issue. With health care costs for obesity running around $240 billion, the Crusaders will use the same “why should my money go to pay for your illness because you (insert crusade topic)” tactic as the spearhead of their campaign.
Once the realization dawns that there’s money in them thar hills, as there was in tobacco litigation, yup…
Oh, and I quit smoking last week, and I am hoping that the odd chance comes along to comment to a Fundie or two that “Satan inspired me to do it”
Both contribute to about 700,000 deaths a year.
Both are unnesecary to survival
both are enjoyable
both have been known to be harmful if used as intended since the 60’s
producers of both failed to warn of their dangers for a long time
It is impossible to have a coherent philosophy in which it is OK to sue cigarette manufacturers and **not[/] the producers of fatty foods (among others). I would love to see someone create such a philosophy.
Why!?. Why is it the government’s job to “gently discourage” me from eating myself to death? There are studies coming out that suggest that a well-balenced, near-stavation diet (<1200 calories a day for women, <1500 calories a day for men) prolonges life by 20-40%. Most people don’t think thatit is wirth it. Should the government “genetly discourage” me from eating more than 1200 calories a day? There is no reason for the government to take the position that an extended life is inherently more valuble than a pleasant life. Next you’ll be suggesting we put up a “web-surfing tax”, to “gently discourage” people from wasting thier lives on the internet when they could be better spent joining the peace corp or doing other sactioning life-enriching activities.
People don’t NEED FAST FOOD, which is what I believe the discussion is here.
Yer pal,
Satan
I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Three months, one week, four days, 16 hours, 6 minutes and 29 seconds.
4106 cigarettes not smoked, saving $513.35.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 6 hours, 10 minutes.
[quote]
To answer your first point, tobacco has been used way before there was even a word for addiction. To your second point, even Cecil himself talked of the dubious nature of testing when it comes to second hand smoke research. We don’t complain that McDonalds isn’t giving us proper research on heart disease and the effects of high cholesterol on people, do we?]/quote]
But people weren’t suing tobacco companies before smoking was linked to addiction, were they?
Cecil’s column was about the carcinogenic effects of secondhand smoke and had nothing to do with the point I was making. The evidence for firsthand smoke is far less questionable. If you want evidence I could point you to any number of recent studies. Naturally, all of them are disputed by the industry.
Anyone who has either looked behind the register at a fast foot establishment or even tasted a Whopper probably has at least a modicum of an idea of the nature of the product. If fast food companies think they can hoodwink people into believing that product labels mean that their food is healthy, then perhaps they deserve whatever fortunes they extract from customers everywhere.
That’s not what I am complaining about, either. The last time I bought a cutlery set, it didn’t even cross my mind that there should be a warning label. My car didn’t have a warning label. But if I don’t want either anymore, I can toss them out. And same with fast food.
Now you have it ass-backwards. If you want me to believe that fast food producers are consciously inserting chemical agents into their food which increase addictiveness and lack of such chemicals in the bodies of addicts results in withdrawal, then perhaps you had better provide the facts. I will not argue with you that many, many people have issues with food. Is this the problem of food providers? I don’t think so. If fast food didn’t exist, then perhaps certain people would abuse other types of food. You ought to prove that there is something inherently addictive about fast food that distinguishes it from all other foods.
You really don’t have to patronize me. If tobacco were a product that people routinely abused, then I would be against the suit. I don’t believe in suing alcohol companies for liver damage. But concealing the fact that cigarette companies were consciously making cigarettes more addictive crosses the line. I don’t find this inconsistent at all.
Yeah, while you’re at it, go ahead and sue Panasonic, Phillips, Sony, and anyone else who makes televisions and other such devices that keep people from going outdoors and exercising.
I would not worry about this comming to pass very soon. In order to institutionalize this kind of legislation, would it not have to go through some gov’t body like congress or something? Have you noticed the size of the bodies of the people in congress? I’d love to see some of those fat bastards put something like this through with a straight face.
And by this same logic, everything I said about the fast food industry should lead to a similar suit. It’s very recently that we have seen the effects of years of fast food abuse, and only now that heart disease and obesity are such problems are we getting the studies in.
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And the fine folks at McWendy King don’t exactly talk about hardened arteries in their reports now do they?
Again, if we wish to be consistant about this…
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You wanna trade that exact quote above with smokes and mention that THERE IS A FRIGGING WARNING RIGHT ON THE PACKAGE that says it is dangerous?
If someone who started smoking since… oh, the early '60s is when the research started to come out and the public started to be informed of the risks and dangers, didn’t know exactly what they were getting into, I submit they were living in a cave.
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Um… This has to do with anything… How? If you’re saying that you can’t ever quit smoking, please read my sig file, thanks. Is it hard? Yep. But I would find it easier to quit tobacco than I would fast food. And I’ll bet I am not alone with that, and I’ll bet there are a ton of people being told by doctors to pay attention to their diet who simply cannot do this.
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The food companies want to make their products tasty and desirable. There are tons of additives in them to make sure you keep coming back.
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They are exactly as responsible as the tobacco companies are. More so, in fact - Nobody has complained or restricted how Ronald McDonald could be advertised to you. Cigarettes (and alcohol for that matter) have been restricted.
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You seem hung up on the fact tht fast food is not addictive. Why is this so important a difference? Both products will kill you if not used within severe moderation. Both products are marketed by people who don’t tell you all of the facts because that doesn’t exactly make good ad copy.
Guns are not “addictive,” but gun manufactuers are being sued (and losing) for a product they make because people deem them responsible. Not because of addiction, but simply because of the way their product is used and the ramifications of such.
Yer pal,
Satan
I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Three months, one week, four days, 17 hours, 37 minutes and 54 seconds.
4109 cigarettes not smoked, saving $513.67.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 6 hours, 25 minutes.
