What about the Coke and stuff that they advertise to minors? hell I’ve seen people give coke to BABIES! you don’t need coke to live, but it sure is aditctive isn’t it? how come no one says anything about Coke then? too much caffine is bad for you, makes it hard to sleep, the low ph is bad for the stomach. hell if we’re gonna sue the tobaco companies we might as well sue 'em all!
I believe fast food IS addictive. I’m sorry, but Carl’s Jr. Criss Cut fries are very addictive, and so are the big Superstars. drools. And I never would have eaten there if it wasn’t for the disgusting commercials with the big fat guys dripping food all over themselves.
And Coke! Don’t even get me started on Coke! I should sue the company for about 10 Million just to get my money back, cuz that’s about how much I have spent on it in my life. And my teeth are rotting out of my head cuz of it. I can’t stop, because it’s addicting!
Those companies have taken advantage of me, of all of us, and we should stand for it anymore!
Two things:
First of all, Drain Bead came up with class action suits against breat implants, and I don’t thyink they are addictive either.
Secondly, the coke analogies by a couple of Dopers above also fits into the analogy I have proposed quite well, and DOES add the addictive qualities of the product that Maeglin seems to think is the difference between junk food and tobacco.
Yer pal,
Satan
I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Three months, one week, four days, 18 hours, 34 minutes and 40 seconds.
4110 cigarettes not smoked, saving $513.87.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 6 hours, 30 minutes.
Can fast food providers forsee that some people will eat too much fat and be injured? of course they can. Could they easily put less fat in their food? Of course they could. Could they foresee that someone could eat while driving thus causing them to get is a wreck? abso-diddley-doodley.
the argument made in the tobacco and gun cases are similar in that they pound on these two questions. And it works. In the McD’s coffee thread, I was in the minority thinking that these questions alone are not enough to prove liability. My guess is that a case agains all makers of fattty foods would succeed if for no other reason because they have a lot of money.
Not that I’m necessarily disputing you, but can you perhaps name one or two of these additives that behave in a chemically similar manner to nicotine or the other addictive alkaloids, and show that they have been deliberately manipulated by fast food restaurants? (“Pickles” and “mayonnaise” are not acceptable answers.)
FTR: As much of an anti-smoker as I am, I do not approve of the tobacco lawsuit, for several reasons which are irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
I think the detriments of a high fat diet have been well established for quite a long time. The biggest source of fats has also been known for at least as long. The ill effect of fats on the heart has been understood for equally as long.
Fast food, though a more recent phenomenon has always been known to be high in fat. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that foods deep fried in fat are going to be… well, fool of fat.
The caloric contents of an average fast food burger has been published in various health food mags and gov’t nutrition reports for over 20 years. I think the fast food joints themselves began publishing the caloric content of their food in the mid 80’s.
No-one, except those same cave dwelling individuals, can claim any kind of ignorance about the lack of nutritional balance in fast food meals.
Do we really need to put a Surgeon General’s warning on every fast food item to get people to understand what they are consuming is not nutritionaly sound and possibly dangerous to their health?
Do we really need an umpteen billion dollar lawsuit to get that point accross? Or is all this simply an attempt to force Ronald and the gang to improve the nutritional content of the food they sell? Lawsuits agains big tobacco have not made the product less dangerous, have they?
More than likely, this will only serve to shame some people into practicing better eating habits (which is a net good to them) by similarly applied public pressure as in the case of smoking in recent years.
[hijack]Oh, also FTR, I also think that McDonald’s in particular, followed closely by BK, concentrate far too much of their marketing on children (animation tie-ins, cartoony advertising, etc.). They don’t much care if they have you as a customer, but if they can get your kids, they’ve got you by default.[/hijack]
QuickSilver wrote:
The whole point with the 142-billion-dollar tobacco lawsuit is that we don’t have to wait for Congress or the State Legislature to outlaw something. We can sue any unpopular industry into bankruptcy right now, using the courts to completely bypass any need for legislation.
Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I just need the money. If Ronald and Carl and the King are forced to improve the nutritional content of the food as a result, that’s even better!
See, that’s where my Canadian slip is showing. I didn’t know that. America truely is the land of opportunity… 
So what’s everyone waiting for? I say sue that clown bastard and his ilk until they bleed! 
pldennison: To be honest, I am unaware if or what the food companies might put in their food would be deemed “adictive,” but that was not my claim anyway, and even if they do not, I already pointed out elsewhere that I do not believe that is the crux of the matter.
Also, let me state for the record that I find the tobacco suit to be ridiculous as well. I would also find my proposed junk food suit (and the also-mentioned soft drink suit as well) to be equally silly.
I mainly wanted to show how si;lly the tobacco law suit was.
Now, most everyone got it, but I wasn’t sure about a few people above which is why I am saying this.
Ultimately, to me there is no difference between what Coke, McDonalds or Phillip Morris are doing to us and how. We’re just treating them differently.
Yer pal,
Satan
I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Three months, one week, four days, 19 hours, 43 minutes and 34 seconds.
4112 cigarettes not smoked, saving $514.11.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 6 hours, 40 minutes.
As other posters have said, I think the main difference is that there is some nutritive value in fast food (i.e. the components of fast food are things that are needed in a balanced diet) whereas smoking is a drug where almost everyone recognizes that the health risks outweigh the benefits.
Some numbers:
My “information please” almanac (1998) says that the maximum total fat intake should be:
for a 1,600 calories level, 53 total fat grams
for a 2,200 calories level, 73 total fat grams
for a 2,800 calories level, 93 total fat grams
and according to the same almanac, the American Heart Association recommends not more than:
300 milligrams of cholesterol
2,400 milligrams of sodium
The McDonald’s nutrition information web page says that a Big Mac has
32 total fat grams
10 saturated fat grams
85 milligrams of cholesterol
1100 milligrams of cholesterol
A single Big Mac seems to fit within the US RDA or American Heart Association guidelines.
Therefore, as we can see, the issue is more complicated when it comes to fast food. A single cigarette has none (or minimal: see below) health benefits, whereas a Big Mac could be considered part of a healthy diet if everything else you ate was extremely low in (or missing) fat. But in the future, I would think it is very possible that USA government warnings may appear in fast food restaurants if the current obesity “problem” still is perceived to be as severe as current reports portray it.
Re: the Straight Dope column on health benefits from smoking:
Does smoking have any health benefits? (03-Feb-1995)
Cecil Adams says in his column that “it prevents or at least slows the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.” and a reader mentions that one form of inflammatory bowel disease seems to be prevented by smoking, however another form of inflammatory bowel disease occurs mainly amongst smokers, so the second benefit may be a draw.
Needless to say that Cecil Adams does NOT say that the advantages of smoking outweigh the health risks.
As I noted in my post above, the reason the two industries are being differently may partly be because the health risks of fast food are not as clear-cut as the health risks of tobacco. I feel the comparison is lacking in accuracy.
Oh, what the heck, I’ll wade in.
The differences between the effects of tobacco and fat in the diet are ones of degree. Are both deleterious? Heck, yes. But one is almost guaranteed to kill or injure you eventually; the other is not. One generally renders you more seriously ill, and much more quickly, than the other. One is dangerous only if you over-indulge greatly and repeatedly; the other is never safe at any level. One arguably has some benefit – fat is necessary to human diet, just not in the quantities we Americans choose to consume, while one has no benefit whatsoever – nicotine has no beneficial effect on the human body.
The difference between the tobacco suits and ones for fast-food is the question of proof. It would be very difficult for the average person with heart disease to prove that he or she developed it because of daily trips to McDonald’s, as opposed to daily consumption of Ring-Dings or Haagen-Daz, or hereditary factors. The diseases people develop from smoking can generally be directly corrolated to smoking and to no other causes. In other words, if you want to sue Wendy’s for developing arteriosclerosis from consuming too many square, allegedly-meat patties, it would be very difficult to prove cause and effect. It’s much easier to prove that, if you have emphysema and you’ve smoked all your life, you probably got emphysema from smoking. Even the tobacco companies do not seriously dispute the causation part of negligent claims against them anymore; rather, they focus (more sensibly, it seems to me) on the free-will argument, inveighing against governmental parternalism.
Which is why addiction is absolutely relevant. If you choose, of your own free will, to use a product that you know or should know is dangerous to your health, then you do so at your own risk. But when addiction is mixed in, the analysis becomes much more difficult, because you arguably are no longer acting with a perfectly “free will.” Ask any smoker how much they intellectually dislike the habit and the expense, and how much they’d like to quit; they continue to smoke not because they want to, but because they biologically almost have to. McDonald’s food is not the same; if they charged $7.00 for one of their crappy little burgers, would people still buy them? I seriously doubt it. But you could probably charge ten dollars a pack for cigarettes and people would still buy them – they’d bitch about it, but they’d buy.
That said, I think the most recent tobacco verdict is ridiculous and almost certain to be overturned on appeal because the damages can’t be sustained. Would I shed a tear if the tobacco companies were forced into bankruptcy? No. Do I think this latest verdict against them is justice in action? No. I think it’s a jury that wants to punish them and does not understand or care about the real value of the dollars it awarded.
Arnold Winkelried wrote:
I think you mean “1100 milligrams of sodium,” not 1100 milligrams of cholesterol.
If a single Big Mac had 1100 mg of cholesterol, we’d all be dead from congestive heart failure by age 25.
Ok, ok say we sue the fast food industry and shut the bastards down…then what the hell am I going to do for lunch tomorrow? huh?
No one “needs” to eat fatty foods.
If we are making the analogy with cigarettes, a burger is a delivery system for fat and sodium, which can be harmfull just as cigarettes are a delivery system for tar.
Some parts of a cigarette are benign and some are harmful.
But none of that matters from a liability standpoint. A product does not have to have an essential usefullness to be defective and harmful.
To be consistent, you need to hate tobacco companies AND fatty food makers.
MR. ZAMBEZI says:
Actually, we all need to eat some fat; we just don’t need to eat so much fat. Nobody needs any nicotine. The difference is a product of limited usefulness as opposed to one of no usefulness whatsoever.
Can be, but not necessarily is. Again, we need some fat and some sodium; we don’t need any tar.
Yes, but a product that has no usefulness and is harmful is very difficult to defend. I can defend a product that is harmful but societally useful on the grounds of its usefulness; I can defend a product that is not useful but is harmless on the grounds that it doesn’t harm anyone. It’s hard to defend a product that actually damages people and is of no measurable good to anyone.
No, you don’t, because one is product is much more dangerous than the other; one arguably has some utility while the other has none; and one is clinically proven to be addictive while the other is not seriously argued to be.
tracer: my bad, I was re-typing instead of C&P. Of course, it was 1100 mg of sodium. :o
Mr. Zambezi says “If we are making the analogy with cigarettes, a burger is a delivery system for fat and sodium, which can be harmfull just as cigarettes are a delivery system for tar.”
The difference is that cholesterol when eaten in the RDA amounts is used by our metabolism. And sodium is often referred to as “an essential element of the diet” (for humans) and is used to help regulate the body’s fluid balance. The cholesterol and sodium are harmful in excess, but not in the quantities present in a Big Mac eaten occasionally.
Sorry, I hit “submit reply” too early. I was going to add more information but Jodi has actually made the points I was going to make much better than I would have.