Cheeseburger Bill A Whitewash to Protect Vile Companies

[Guest guest]

Fat Chance

 

By John Feffer, TomPaine.com

April 27, 2004

 

It's all about you. Your mid-afternoon candy bars. Your wallowing in

all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets like a pig in mud. Your inability to just

say no to that supersized French Fries, that Massive Gulp of soda, that

waste paper basket full of popcorn at the gigaplex.

 

The personal responsibility movement, which has brought us such lumps of

coal as abstinence pacts and zero tolerance of drugs even for medical

purposes, is now attacking the food we eat. Correction: attacking us for

the food we eat. And the worst part is, they want to take away our ability

to fight back. The " Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act of

2003 " – informally known as the " cheeseburger bill " – passed the House in

early March and is now set to stir up debate in the Senate later this

spring. The bill attempts to ban all lawsuits that link the food industry

to obesity or obesity-related diseases such as diabetes. Following Capitol

Hill's lead, 24 states, including Arizona as of last week, have introduced

bills during the 2004 session that would similarly shield the food

industry from personal-injury lawsuits.

 

Ever since a group of obese teenagers went after McDonalds in court in

2002 for not disclosing the health consequences of successive Big Mac

attacks, Big Food is running scared that the overweight will take a cue

from smokers who successfully went after Big Tobacco.

 

The myth of the frivolous lawsuit

 

The food industry is only the most recent convert to tort reform – the

campaign to limit payouts on personal liability claims claims that was

central to Newt Gingrich's Contract with America in 1994. Though Americans

are notoriously litigious, the plague of lawsuits is largely a myth. In

1986, Ronald Reagan told an anecdote about a drunk driver plowing into a

telephone booth and the unlucky caller suing. . . the telephone company!

What Reagan failed to mention was that the caller tried to get out of the

booth to avoid the onrushing car but the door didn't work properly – an

entirely appropriate lawsuit. As Duke University law professor Neil Vidmar

persuasively argued in a 1999 essay, " The data bearing on jury trial

verdicts, settlement, and frivolous litigation strongly suggest that the

traditional tort system is in fact relatively effective in screening out

nonmeritorious cases. " And yet, tort reform, like a bad case of food

poisoning, stays with us, and the " cheeseburger bill " is the latest

reminder.

 

Let's for the moment forget knee-jerk libertarianism and its " get your

dirty laws off my paunch " battle cry. Obesity is a problem, if not for you

then at least for an ever increasing number of ever-increasing Americans.

One-third of the population is obese, two-thirds are overweight, and the

Journal of International Obesity warns of an " epidemic. " It's a problem

particularly among children, the less affluent, new immigrants, and women

of color. The costs are staggering: the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention estimate America's annual price tag for obesity at $117 billion.

And it's not just America. In 2000, to underscore the growing global

divide of haves and have nots, the number of overweight finally matched

that of the undernourished at 1.1 billion each.

 

No panaceas

 

Few dispute these conclusions (aside from " big is beautiful " enthusiasts).

Yet there is little consensus about how to deal with the problem. The

personal responsibility movement and conservative front organizations such

as the Consumer Freedom Council focus on the demand side of the equation.

People should simply eat less and exercise more. Yes, and when we've

accomplished these tasks, we should just be nice to each other, stop

haggling over meaningless national borders and refrain from taking so many

cross-country trips in our SUVs. Thus, in a thrice, we would solve murder,

war and global warming without ever having to control firearms, regulate

the arms trade, or restrict global carbon dioxide emissions.

 

Why do conservatives only talk about the supply side when the topic is

taxes? Obesity is not only about us. It's also about them. Fast food

restaurants, commodity councils and food processors all profit off our fat.

The more health clubs that sprout up and diet books that hit the

bestseller list, the more Big Food turns up the volume and frequency of

its pitches. The soft drink industry alone spends $600 million a year,

which Greg Critser compares in Fat Land to the National Cancer Institute's

measly $1 million in fruit and vegetable promotion. Big Food runs ads on

TV that burn jingles into children's brains ( " two all-beef patties... " )

far more effectively than any Maoist slogan. Cash-strapped schools are

bribed into sponsoring junk food vending machines and allowing fast food

restaurants to sell their wares on school property.

 

Subsidizing poor nutrition

 

It's not just in the hawking. Much takes place behind our well-padded

backs. U.S. government subsidies sustain such contributors to the national

waistline as corn growers and livestock raisers, keeping prices down for

beef and corn syrup. Marion Nestle's Food Politics reveals how our Food

Pyramid – the U.S. Department of Agriculture's recommendations of how many

servings of different food groups should be consumed daily – is distorted

because the Lentil Lobby and the Broccoli Bloc have nothing on the meat

and dairy industries. The sugar industry – which supplies the most money

to political campaigns of any agricultural lobby – leaned on U.S. Congress

and the Bush administration to slam a 2003 World Health Organization

report that urged a reduction of sugar consumption. Big Sugar had the gall

to call for a reduction of its own: of U.S. contributions to the WHO.

 

Lawsuits have been one effective way of challenging the supply side of the

equation. A suit against Kraft because of what's known as the " trans fat "

in their Oreos led to the company to pledge to reduce the offending

substance. A suit against McDonalds for falsely advertising that its fry

oil was vegetarian when it contained traces of beef flavoring led to a

multi-million dollar settlement for vegetarian groups among others. These

lawsuits have helped to change the climate of opinion about fat. The

suppliers are cleaning up their act. Subway has gone all Twiggy on us,

with Jared and Atkins and Herman/Sherman. Ruby Tuesday will be introducing

a new menu at the end of April that will give the nutritional breakdown

for all of its dishes, not just the " heart healthy " ones.

 

Complex problems require complex solutions

 

And yet, obesity isn't just a question of supply and demand. It can't be

solved by lawyers or personal responsibility gurus. " Litigation isn't a

major cure for our obesity, " Michael Jacobson, executive director of

Center for Science in the Public Interest. " It may be in some cases,

useful – something people ought to examine – but obesity is caused by so

many factors in our society that no one thing can solve the obesity

problem. "

 

Beneath the push me-pull you of the American political economy are the

more profound structural reasons why we're all getting soft around the

middle. We're addicted to cars. We can't tear ourselves away from the TV.

Poorer neighborhoods are unsafe for children to exercise, and many suburbs

don't have sidewalks. And, perhaps most ominously, our economic system

acknowledges few limits, whether environmental, social or international.

Lack of responsibility is practically hardwired into our lifestyles. At 5

percent of the global population, Americans consume nearly one-quarter of

the world's resources. It would be a surprise, frankly, if we weren't

overweight.

 

The personal responsibility movement believes that self-control – I will

not eat that fifth piece of fried chicken, I will not sue KFC for failing

to inform me of what all that fried chicken skin has done to my heart –

can solve America's obesity problem. Advocates of the legal strategy want

to force Big Food to put on the brakes. But the pounds will not melt away

until we step away from the car, get up from the couch, make our

neighborhoods more exercise-friendly, and radically change the consumption

ethos that forms the soft white underbelly of the American way of life.

 

John Feffer is the author most recently of North Korea, South Korea: U.S.

Policy at a Time of Crisis.

 

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" God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then He

instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to

solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if

not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them. "

--President George W. Bush, in Israel

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

The Stewarts wrote:

 

> The personal responsibility movement, which has brought us such lumps of

> coal as abstinence pacts and zero tolerance of drugs even for medical

> purposes, is now attacking the food we eat. Correction: attacking us for

> the food we eat. And the worst part is, they want to take away our ability

> to fight back. The " Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act of

> 2003 " – informally known as the " cheeseburger bill " – passed the House in

> early March and is now set to stir up debate in the Senate later this

> spring. The bill attempts to ban all lawsuits that link the food industry

> to obesity or obesity-related diseases such as diabetes. Following Capitol

> Hill's lead, 24 states, including Arizona as of last week, have introduced

> bills during the 2004 session that would similarly shield the food

> industry from personal-injury lawsuits.

 

Fine, then sue the ad agencies for the malicious and knowing way that

they brainwash people into over-indulging themselves on the

health-threatening crap.

[Guest guest]

, The Stewarts <stews9@c...>

wrote:

> Fat Chance

>

> By John Feffer, TomPaine.com

> April 27, 2004

>

> It's all about you. Your mid-afternoon candy bars. Your wallowing

in

> all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets like a pig in mud. Your inability

to just

> say no to that supersized French Fries, that Massive Gulp of soda,

that

> waste paper basket full of popcorn at the gigaplex.

 

As a Libertarian, I support this bill. I personally have pretty much

stopped eating any sort of fast food because I am trying to lower my

cholesterol. (My vegetarianism is a health thing.) Everyone here

takes responsibility for their heath by eating a healthy diet;

everyone in America knows that triple-decker bacon cheeseburgers are

bad for them. There may be jingles, but there are also alarmist news

stories about how fast food is horrible for us and the obesity

epidemic is mushrooming. Information about healthy alternatives, and

the alternatives themselves, are getting easier to find. I am not

interested in living in a nation where my government tries to raise

me well into my adulthood, sorry.

 

Blessed be,

Jayelle