Dillinger
Guerrilla Ontologist
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- Sep 19, 2000
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Mostly excerpted from an article in the July/August 2002 issue of "Men's Health" magazine.
According to the Surgeon General, 300,000 Americans die prematurely each year thanks to their weight, and obesity imposes an economic hit of more than $100 billion. That's more damage than is done by either smoking or drinking, according to a study by the Rand Corporation.
Overweight men are:
Lately a growing number of academics, health professionals, politicians, and even lawyers have begun to agree that while preaching diet and excercise is fine, it's not enough. America, they say, needs to recognize junk food as a public-health menace on a par with alcohol and tobacco. And that means taxing, regulating - even suing - the nations big food companies.
"In my mind, our environment is responsible for the epidemic of obesity," says Kelly Brownell, Ph.D, a Yale University psychology professor. "We're sitting idly by while the food companies are selling us massive portions of unhealthy food."
Brownell and his allies believe its time to alter this environment. "A sense of militancy and outrage needs to develop, similar to the way people feel about the tobacco companies," he says. To change the culture, he and his colleagues talk of requiring nutrition information on restaurant menus, regulating food advertising, even imposing a "fat tax" on junk foods. Brownell won't go this far, but some rabid food reformers even advocate filing multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuits against giant junk-food companies.
Men's Health nationwide phone survey of men and women:
The fundamental problem, as Brownell puts it, is that "healthy food costs more and is harder to get. The unhealthy food is everywhere, and its cheap. And that should be reversed." It's tough to disagree. Coke machines and fast-food restaurants are ubiquitous - but just try finding fresh fruit along the highway. Meanwhile, the low cost of junk food has led to an explosion in portion sizes. In the 1950s, Coca-Cola came in 6 1/2-ounce bottles. Today a 20-ounce Coke is typical, and McDonald's will sell you a 42-ounce cup for about 2 bucks. (The difference between the 6 1/2-ounce and the 42-ounce servings is nearly 500 calories!)
But its not just that junk food is easier to find; it's also that it's marketed incessantly. The food industry spends $30 billion a year on advertising - with 70 percent of it pitching convenience foods, candy, soda, alcohol, and desserts. Only 2 percent promotes healthy stuff like vegetables, fruits, grains, and beans. True, the government makes some effort to educate us about nutrition, but it amounts to shouting in a hurricane. In 1999, McDonald's and Burger King together spent more than $1 billion on advertising: that same year the National Cancer Institute's "5-A-Day" campaign promoting fruits and vegetables had a budget of $1 million - one one-thousandth as much.
Will Americans actually pay attention to get-healthy commercials? Michael Jacobson thinks so. He is the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Jacobson advocates a junk-food tax. And he believes there's proof it can slim down America, provided the revenues are used to fund health campaigns. To make his case he plays a videotape of two advertisements CSPI ran repeatedly in Wheeling, West Virginia three years ago. The ads were designed, essentially, to discourage people from drinking high-fat milk. In one, a perky brunette in a supermarket warns that "one glass of whole milk has the artery-clogging fat of five strips of bacon. Just move your hand from here" - she shifts her hand from a carton of whole milk to a carton of low-fat milk - "to here!"
"we blasted those towns," Jacobson says. "The grocery stores were running out of low-fat milk" Indeed, CSPI's data shows that low-fat milk sales rose 50% during the test period. The lesson? "You can use education to change eating habits," Jacobson says.
John Banzhaf is a professor at George Washington University law school and infamous in the nation's capital - he encourages his law students to dream up, and actually file, their own lawsuits. Thirty years ago Banzhaf used ingenious legal tactics to have televised tobacco advertising banned, and in 1990 he won a prohibition against smoking on U.S. airline flights. ("I don't think I can talk about him without gagging," a tobacco executive once said.)
Banzhaf became interested in food last year, when a vegan student in his class was horrified to discover something about McDonald's french fries: Although the company had advertised its fries as cooked in "100 percent vegetable oil, "they actually contained a small amount of beef extract - described in the company's nutrition information only as a "natural flavor." Banzhaf saw a possible false-advertising lawsuit and put his students to work detailing it. A Hindu lawyer in Seattle took the case. Initially, Banzhaf says, people laughted when he described the suit. But in March word leaked that McDonald's intended to settle the class-action lawsuit for $12.4 million. (The money wll be spread mainly among vegetarian and religious groups.)
That McDonald's wouldn't take its chances in court and possibly set a legal precedent if it lost tells Banshaf the company has come to fear what a jury might think of its advertising practices.
Now Banzhaf is waiting to see what will happen to Big Daddy. That's the name of a Florida ice-cream brand whose supposed low calorie count made it a choice of Weight Watchers members around hte state. Alas, scoops of Big Daddy ice cream turned out to be three times as fattening as its packaging promised. The company calls it a screwup, but a class-action lawsuit is proceeding. More recently, notes Banzhaf, a disgruntled dieter filed a $50 million class-action lawsuit against the makers of Pirate's Booty cheese puffs, when Good Housekeeping magazine found that the diet snack food had 240 percent more fat than advertised.
Banzhaf says these cases are setting precedents and clearing a path for future litigation. "It certainly shows that such food-fruad suits are viable," he says. And if its possible to sue McDonald's for fibbing about the cooking processes, he asks, couldn't someone argue that hte company effectively lied by not making clear what was in its Big Macs?"
Banzhaf says that "lawyers call it deception by omission when a seller fails to tell a purchaser something he would want to know about." Drugs with nasty side efects, after all, are required to disclose them in their advertising. Products sold in stores have to disclose fat content - why not chain fat-burgers advertised on TV? "Take an ad you see for a triple-bacon cheeseburger supersize meal," says Banzhaf. "If its way over your recommended allowance of fat, that's a potential health and legal liability."
The law says you can get in trouble for implying health benefits when there are none. One of the first major jury awards against a cigarette company, in 1991, hinged on the way ads for cigarettes played up their supposed health benefits with slogans like L&M's "Just What the Doctor Ordered." Is it so different when pro basketball stars and steel-bunned starlets pitch things like Pepsi and Burger King?
Banzhaf believes that the food industry could one day be suied for billions by states that incur high health-care costs for their portly-citizens. But it won't be easy. Tobacco companies didn't just omit unpleasant facts - they actively lied and covered them up. Plus, linking heart disease to a diet, and then to a company like McDonald's, would require several long leaps. "The biggest problem is what lawyers call causation," Banzhaf says. "More than 90 percent of lung cancers are caused by smoking. But it's hard to tell what caused a heart attack. What percentage is obesity, versus other factors?" And was McDonald's 4 percent, versus 2 percent for Haagen-Dazs?
Banzhaf calls lawusits a "last resort" and says he prefers legislative approaches. But he insists that slim people shouldn't bear the health costs imposed by their hefty brethren. At the very least, he argues, health insurers should charge obese people higher premiums, just as they do smokers.
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(Edited for spelling only.)
According to the Surgeon General, 300,000 Americans die prematurely each year thanks to their weight, and obesity imposes an economic hit of more than $100 billion. That's more damage than is done by either smoking or drinking, according to a study by the Rand Corporation.
Overweight men are:
- 120% more likely to develop stomach cancer (obese men, 330%)
- 5% more likely to die of prostrate cancer (obese men, 21%)
- 35% more likely to develop kidney cancer (obese men, 70%)
- 40% more likely to develop gallstones (obese men, 130%)
- 590% more likely to develop esophageal cancer (obese men, 1,520%)
Lately a growing number of academics, health professionals, politicians, and even lawyers have begun to agree that while preaching diet and excercise is fine, it's not enough. America, they say, needs to recognize junk food as a public-health menace on a par with alcohol and tobacco. And that means taxing, regulating - even suing - the nations big food companies.
"In my mind, our environment is responsible for the epidemic of obesity," says Kelly Brownell, Ph.D, a Yale University psychology professor. "We're sitting idly by while the food companies are selling us massive portions of unhealthy food."
Brownell and his allies believe its time to alter this environment. "A sense of militancy and outrage needs to develop, similar to the way people feel about the tobacco companies," he says. To change the culture, he and his colleagues talk of requiring nutrition information on restaurant menus, regulating food advertising, even imposing a "fat tax" on junk foods. Brownell won't go this far, but some rabid food reformers even advocate filing multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuits against giant junk-food companies.
Men's Health nationwide phone survey of men and women:
- 23% of Americans favor levying a junk-food tax.
- 19% of Americans want fast-food advertisements banned.
- 25% of the population thinks obese people should be required to pay an additional surcharge for health insurance.
- 54% of the population believes that people who maintain a healthy weight should receive discounts on their health insurance.
The fundamental problem, as Brownell puts it, is that "healthy food costs more and is harder to get. The unhealthy food is everywhere, and its cheap. And that should be reversed." It's tough to disagree. Coke machines and fast-food restaurants are ubiquitous - but just try finding fresh fruit along the highway. Meanwhile, the low cost of junk food has led to an explosion in portion sizes. In the 1950s, Coca-Cola came in 6 1/2-ounce bottles. Today a 20-ounce Coke is typical, and McDonald's will sell you a 42-ounce cup for about 2 bucks. (The difference between the 6 1/2-ounce and the 42-ounce servings is nearly 500 calories!)
But its not just that junk food is easier to find; it's also that it's marketed incessantly. The food industry spends $30 billion a year on advertising - with 70 percent of it pitching convenience foods, candy, soda, alcohol, and desserts. Only 2 percent promotes healthy stuff like vegetables, fruits, grains, and beans. True, the government makes some effort to educate us about nutrition, but it amounts to shouting in a hurricane. In 1999, McDonald's and Burger King together spent more than $1 billion on advertising: that same year the National Cancer Institute's "5-A-Day" campaign promoting fruits and vegetables had a budget of $1 million - one one-thousandth as much.
- Overweight men are 19% more likely to die of any cause (obese men, 62%).
- Overweight men are 19% more likely to die in a car crash (obese men, 37%)
Will Americans actually pay attention to get-healthy commercials? Michael Jacobson thinks so. He is the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Jacobson advocates a junk-food tax. And he believes there's proof it can slim down America, provided the revenues are used to fund health campaigns. To make his case he plays a videotape of two advertisements CSPI ran repeatedly in Wheeling, West Virginia three years ago. The ads were designed, essentially, to discourage people from drinking high-fat milk. In one, a perky brunette in a supermarket warns that "one glass of whole milk has the artery-clogging fat of five strips of bacon. Just move your hand from here" - she shifts her hand from a carton of whole milk to a carton of low-fat milk - "to here!"
"we blasted those towns," Jacobson says. "The grocery stores were running out of low-fat milk" Indeed, CSPI's data shows that low-fat milk sales rose 50% during the test period. The lesson? "You can use education to change eating habits," Jacobson says.
John Banzhaf is a professor at George Washington University law school and infamous in the nation's capital - he encourages his law students to dream up, and actually file, their own lawsuits. Thirty years ago Banzhaf used ingenious legal tactics to have televised tobacco advertising banned, and in 1990 he won a prohibition against smoking on U.S. airline flights. ("I don't think I can talk about him without gagging," a tobacco executive once said.)
Banzhaf became interested in food last year, when a vegan student in his class was horrified to discover something about McDonald's french fries: Although the company had advertised its fries as cooked in "100 percent vegetable oil, "they actually contained a small amount of beef extract - described in the company's nutrition information only as a "natural flavor." Banzhaf saw a possible false-advertising lawsuit and put his students to work detailing it. A Hindu lawyer in Seattle took the case. Initially, Banzhaf says, people laughted when he described the suit. But in March word leaked that McDonald's intended to settle the class-action lawsuit for $12.4 million. (The money wll be spread mainly among vegetarian and religious groups.)
That McDonald's wouldn't take its chances in court and possibly set a legal precedent if it lost tells Banshaf the company has come to fear what a jury might think of its advertising practices.
Now Banzhaf is waiting to see what will happen to Big Daddy. That's the name of a Florida ice-cream brand whose supposed low calorie count made it a choice of Weight Watchers members around hte state. Alas, scoops of Big Daddy ice cream turned out to be three times as fattening as its packaging promised. The company calls it a screwup, but a class-action lawsuit is proceeding. More recently, notes Banzhaf, a disgruntled dieter filed a $50 million class-action lawsuit against the makers of Pirate's Booty cheese puffs, when Good Housekeeping magazine found that the diet snack food had 240 percent more fat than advertised.
Banzhaf says these cases are setting precedents and clearing a path for future litigation. "It certainly shows that such food-fruad suits are viable," he says. And if its possible to sue McDonald's for fibbing about the cooking processes, he asks, couldn't someone argue that hte company effectively lied by not making clear what was in its Big Macs?"
Banzhaf says that "lawyers call it deception by omission when a seller fails to tell a purchaser something he would want to know about." Drugs with nasty side efects, after all, are required to disclose them in their advertising. Products sold in stores have to disclose fat content - why not chain fat-burgers advertised on TV? "Take an ad you see for a triple-bacon cheeseburger supersize meal," says Banzhaf. "If its way over your recommended allowance of fat, that's a potential health and legal liability."
The law says you can get in trouble for implying health benefits when there are none. One of the first major jury awards against a cigarette company, in 1991, hinged on the way ads for cigarettes played up their supposed health benefits with slogans like L&M's "Just What the Doctor Ordered." Is it so different when pro basketball stars and steel-bunned starlets pitch things like Pepsi and Burger King?
Banzhaf believes that the food industry could one day be suied for billions by states that incur high health-care costs for their portly-citizens. But it won't be easy. Tobacco companies didn't just omit unpleasant facts - they actively lied and covered them up. Plus, linking heart disease to a diet, and then to a company like McDonald's, would require several long leaps. "The biggest problem is what lawyers call causation," Banzhaf says. "More than 90 percent of lung cancers are caused by smoking. But it's hard to tell what caused a heart attack. What percentage is obesity, versus other factors?" And was McDonald's 4 percent, versus 2 percent for Haagen-Dazs?
Banzhaf calls lawusits a "last resort" and says he prefers legislative approaches. But he insists that slim people shouldn't bear the health costs imposed by their hefty brethren. At the very least, he argues, health insurers should charge obese people higher premiums, just as they do smokers.
----------
(Edited for spelling only.)
Last edited:
