Fast-Food Suit Resurfaces

ALBANY, N.Y. -- When parents of two New York City teens filed a lawsuit against McDonald's, blaming the fast-food icon for their children's obesity, the suit was publicly met with fat jokes and gripes about frivolous lawsuits.

The suit was dismissed in January by a federal court judge, but a month later it was refined and refiled. This time, the teens' attorney argued the company used deceptive marketing tactics to push misinformation about the food at children, according to the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union.

If that sounds familiar, it should: It's the same basic argument at the heart of the suits against tobacco companies, which now are paying out billions for the damage their products did to people's health.

The epidemic rate at which young Americans are fattening up has thrust obesity into the forefront of the discussion on national health. Governments are looking at ways to get citizens, particularly children, to slim down. And lawyers who litigated class action lawsuits against the tobacco giants now predict the food industry will be the next held liable for how they market their products.

"I think we'll see a progression similar to what we saw with tobacco," warned Richard Daynard, head of Northeastern University's Tobacco Products Liability Project. "People originally thought, 'How can you blame a poor tobacco company for people's choices?' As people saw the manipulations they were involved in, public sentiment changed."

The percentage of overweight Americans has risen so sharply in the past three decades that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now considers obesity an epidemic. Sixty-one percent of Americans were overweight or obese in 1999. The surgeon general estimates obesity causes 300,000 deaths each year and cost the U.S. economy $117 billion in 2000.

That compares with about 23 percent of American adults who smoked that year. The CDC blames tobacco for more deaths -- 440,000 annually -- but lower health costs, $75 billion.

Daynard claims fast-food companies continue to use deceptive marketing that could win overweight Americans money from the food industry -- the same stone with which lawyers brought down the Goliath of tobacco companies.

Philip Morris recently lost a case in which smokers of light cigarettes claimed they were misled into thinking they were less dangerous, a belief cigarette manufacturers fostered by marketing.

The reintroduced McDonald's lawsuit alleges that the company promoted their chicken nuggets as a healthy alternative to the other menu items. In fact, a 10-piece McNuggets has three times the fat (33 grams) as a McDonald's hamburger (10 grams), according to the New York City office of attorney Samuel Hirsch, who represents the teens suing McDonald's.

The threat is real enough that two Republican lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Ric Keller of Florida and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, introduced bills prohibiting federal lawsuits against restaurants and food manufacturers based on obesity-related claims.

Fast-food companies are responding to critics. Recently, McDonald's started adding fruit to its European menus and is expected to soon offer the healthier choice in the United States.