Tobacco Foes Ready Legal Assault Over Obesity

BOSTON (Reuters) - Some of the people who took Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man to court will meet this weekend to discuss doing the same to the likes of Ronald McDonald and other well-known faces of the food industry.

Law professor Richard Daynard of Boston's Northeastern University and Washington lawyer John Banzhaf are among the anti-tobacco crusaders due to attend a conference in Boston that will examine legal approaches to fight obesity.

Their argument? Just like cigarette makers hooked smokers with nicotine and went after teens with hip advertising, food companies have addicted millions of Americans on cheap, high-calorie products -- causing an obesity epidemic that sucks more than $90 billion from the nation's health care system each year.

The sort of legal approach they envision would go far beyond a few consumers accusing McDonald's of making them fat, or last month's widely publicized but short-lived lawsuit against Kraft Food Inc. that sought a ban on Oreo cookies because of purported health risks.

But the possibility of a new wave of tobacco-style litigation has provoked outrage in the food industry, triggered a noisy debate over personal responsibility and even stirred the U.S. Congress to get involved.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel heard emotional testimony on Thursday about a proposed law that would protect restaurants against lawsuits from people who blame fast food marketing for their obesity.

Stephanie Childs of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a Washington lobby group that represents hundreds of food makers, said the real purpose of the Boston meeting was to come up with new ways for lawyers to line their pockets.

"They're going to sit down and talk about who should pay for the Learjets they used to fly into Boston," she said. "A lawsuit isn't going to help anybody lose one single pound or improve any person's health."

Ben Kelley is among those organizing this weekend's conference, where participants will be asked to sign an affidavit vowing to keep secret potential legal strategies.

Kelley, a visiting professor at Tufts University and head of the Public Health Advocacy Institute, said that with childhood obesity rates skyrocketing, the meeting will look at the ways food companies promote their products to children.

"It is necessary to understand how the companies that make high-density, low-cost food market it very aggressively to schools and kids," he said. "We need to know what they have known about the impact of those strategies on overeating."

Northeastern's Daynard said there may be appropriate grounds for a lawsuit if it can be shown that fast food outlets knew that their marketing was contributing to overeating and either did nothing or exploited that knowledge for profit.

"The food companies are really quite deceptive in the kinds of information they give about their products so that you have the McDonald's -- I used to take my kids there and I did not want red meat so I would get the chicken or the fish and it turns out both are higher in calories and fat than the Big Mac," Daynard told Reuters.

Washington-based attorney John Coale, one of the chief architects of the tobacco master settlement who has also taken on gun makers on behalf of several cities, said he would not attend the Boston meeting because of a prior engagement but supports its aims.

"It's not going to work if you take obese people and blame McDonald's for everything," he said. "But the issue that does have legs is kids."

Coale said he has "no doubt" that food companies have a strategy to hook children on fatty foods, but is unsure whether the issue is best decided by lawmakers or by courts.

"You've got clowns, you've got happy meals -- and it's OK in moderation but it's gotten to the point where it's overkill," he said. "Still, whether it rises to the level of a good lawsuit remains to be seen."

Kids are soft and fat because they don't move around from the TV set. Sue the TV set makers.

Don't forget the computer manufactures, riding lawn mower manufacturers, school bus manufacturers,text book manufacturers, lawn chair manufacturers, elevator manufacturers, car manufacturers, automatic garage door manufacturers, stereo manufacturers (less walkman), outboard motor manufacturers, hydraulic,phneumatic, and electric tool manufacturers, escelator manufactures......the list goes on and on....it still boils down to individual common sense and will to live healthy, not a producer of a product that makes live better for everyone!

It's pretty obvious the problem is not kids' eating unhealthy foods, it's kids' failure to exercise.

Actually, I respectfully disagree with you on this, but the lack of excercise causes a number of other problems that we are seeing in kids today. - This is my opinion. I don't claim to know anything about anything, it's just some observations and some things I've noticed over the years -

I believe that a diet that's high in carbs and sugars will cause obesity. Let me start by saying that I'm morbidly obese: I really let myself go a number of years ago, and never did anything about it. I'm 6'4" tall, but weighed a bit over 320#. Five weeks ago, I started the Atkins diet, and I've lost 22# in those short weeks. For those who say that the food is addictive, and that people have no choice in what they eat, I say BULL!!! The simple fact is that you simply decide what you're going to eat. You say yes or no: You make a choice. Isn't funny how the same people who go on and on about how important "freedom to choose" is when they're talking about abortions, believe that people have no freedom to choose about anything else in their lives.

Back to my second point. Weight can be controlled simply by diet, with no excercise, but it's not as healthy this way. I will start exercising when I've lost another 25#, due to a number of other physical problems. It will help, but it's not required for weight loss at this time. On the other hand, I believe that a combination of lack of exercise and way too much sugar in the diet of America's kids is causing all sorts of behavioral problems. I recall being a kid who in grade school needed to burn off as much energy as I could at recess to be able to study and concentrate in class. We had a full hour at lunch and 2 twenty minute recesses every day, and we would run around like crazy, burning off lots of energy. I don't think that I ever spent more than about 20 minutes actually eating back then! Back then, we never even had a phys ed class. However, we'd start playing what ever game was in season (baseball, basketball, kickball, dodgeball, or soccer), or football, which always seemed to be in season for us. Or tag... Any reason to run around. Then, after school, we (the kids in the neighborhood) would run around, playing whatever (see above), or maybe "king of the hill!" We'd do that until dinner, and by that time, we had burned off enough energy to eat, do homework, and sleep well. I figure that when I was a kid, I spent at least 3 hours a day running around like a maniac. And so did all the kids that I knew back then. We didn't eat the enormous amount of sugar that is around today: Drinking a soda with a meal was a "treat," not SOP. You never just had a soda when you were thirsty. And going to a fast food restaurant was another rare thing. And people wonder why kids today seem to be getting into so much trouble, or having behavioral problems. Let them burn off some of that natural energy, and get them some exercise! I rarely see kids out playing any more. They're all inside, playing video games, watching TV, or playing on the computer. I agree that a lack of exercise does cause problems, but by cutting back on the bad stuff kids eat would be the place to start to cut back obesity.

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