"Can We Sue Our Own Fat Asses Off?"

By Megan McArdle

May 31, 2002 | [Read the story.]

Well, the Nanny Nation rears its busybody, interfering, know-it-all head again. It was only a matter of time when the Joy Kill Club, under the guise of saving the nation and its collective wallet, went after Demon Fast Food.

There is a puritanical strain of punitive nosey-parkerism in this country that goes back to Prohibition and every health-fad scam of the 19th century. It's surpassingly strange to me that a nation that prides itself on its sense of rugged individualism and self-reliance can't seem to stop telling everyone how to live their lives.

I've got a better idea than merely suing McDonald's, KFC, et al. Let's get down to root causes: Old age is a leading indicator of imminent death, and those selfish oldsters sure use more than their fair share of healthcare dollars. Let's have a progressive tax on aging, and maybe the coots will shoot themselves and save us some money.

Heck, why stop there? Birth is a leading cause of eventual death, and every one of you who's alive is costing us every damned day! We won't stand for it. Sue everyone, all the time!

-- Suzanne Goodman

As a graduate student studying the health effects of obesity, I would like to thank you for running Megan McArdle's recent article, "Can We Sue Our Own Fat Asses Off?" Her work draws attention to an area of obesity prevention that is too often ignored: namely, the use of tactics like public policy or litigation to prevent the spread of obesity.

Ms. McArdle argues convincingly that sweeping lawsuits against fast-food companies may ultimately do the nation's consumers more harm than good. How unfortunate, then, that she focuses her journalistic skill on an obesity-prevention strategy proposed by a law professor whose knowledge of the obesity epidemic is apparently confined to the fact that, like being a smoker, being obese carries health risks.

I am especially disappointed that Ms. McArdle did not consult any scientists or policymakers with expertise in obesity prevention and treatment. This oversight leads her to bypass or bungle realistic strategies that target the obesity epidemic. For example, she assumes that a proposed California tax on soda is meant to deter people from buying soda and writes that "when 61 percent of a nation as rich as ours is overweight, adding 2 cents to the price of a soda is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."

But what if the point of this 2 cent tax is precisely that it will not deter people from buying a soda? I don't know exactly what 2 cents times the number of cans of soda sold each year in California would total, but I'm guessing that it's a substantial sum. Such revenue could be used to fund anti-obesity, pro-health strategies that would change infrastructure, prices, laws, and ultimately the behaviors of the public. The "easy" litigation that McArdle describes (such as suing food manufacturers for false labeling) might play a role here, but approaches like lobbying state or federal governments, building new facilities, and conducting public-awareness campaigns are at least as important. Potential targets for change include

• the amount of television "junk food" advertising aimed at children
• the way healthy foods are advertised (when was the last time you saw an appealing prime-time TV commercial for, say, broccoli?)
• the ubiquitous availability of "junk food" vs. the effort required to eat healthier foods
• the low price of "junk food" vs. the higher price of healthier foods
• the (low) priority given to physical education classes in school budgets
• inadequate public transit, unsafe inner-city neighborhoods, the lack of bike lanes, and other barriers that keep people from incorporating physical activity into their daily routines.

Obviously some of these targets are more manageable than others. We need journalists who will consult with the experts and help the public understand the merits and pitfalls of proposed anti-obesity strategies. I hope that in the future, Salon will devote space to anti-obesity efforts that hold more promise than suing the fat asses off McDonald's, KFC, and their ilk.

-- Erin Digitale

It will be a sorry state of affairs in the drive-thru line if the "dietary morality" zealots achieve success. We are a nation of individuals and must resist their efforts to make us members of their clone eating army.

-- Lee Connelly

Ms. McArdle's piece on junk food was at best about as nutritious as a load of furry fries.

I really think it's beneath Salon to publish such blatantly tactical wingnut crap. The whole piece was a straw man for one of the wingnuts' favorite targets -- trial lawyers. Why, all the little people should just trust big-daddy corporations and the "free market" to keep our bodies clean from the swill being sold everywhere. And the labels -- we should know better even when they lie, right?

Oh, and don't sue! Lawsuits are bad! Bad for business! Yeah, right. Let's just wait for all those good honest folks running the corporations and the country to come around on their own and look to cleaning up this mess.

Just to briefly point out how shallow the whole piece was, I'll start with her conclusion: "Otherwise, someday someone's long-shot lawsuit could send us all to the poorhouse" -- implying that it will be someone's lawsuit, and not the socioeconomic costs of corporations doing business in this way, that will really hurt us.

Do you mean like all the suits that corporations are filing against governments via NAFTA to sell unsafe or banned products to the places that banned them? Or [the suits filed by] corporations patenting and thereby owning the human genome? Or [those filed to keep] lower-cost generic drugs off the market by suing competitors legally engaged in producing the generics, just so they can buy a little more high-profit time ripping us off? No, she argues, just suits filed on behalf of the "little people." Meaning the vast majority of U.S. citizens.

Oh, and let's dispense with the wacky California bullshit. Wacky us, we have set the highest standards in the world on environment, health and public safety -- and have economically waxed the asses off every other state in this union, whilst footing the bill for more than a third of the rest of this country. Yeah, let's lower our standards to the level of, say, Texas or Illinois -- yup, that's the way to go -- bass-ackwards. Oh, and BTW -- the proposed 2 cent soda tax was not to encourage folks to buy bottled water (duh?), it was to pay for health-related programs the government could use to help lower obesity. But hell, let's leave that to the "free market" too. I mean, if you can't trust a corporation CEO, who can you trust?

I'll take California's progressive government and resultant superior standard of living to any other regulation-free toilet-bowl backwater, which describes most of this country (been there, smelt that) any day.

Next time, how about a real essay and not a decoy for your wingnut friends?

Cheers! Now go finish your burger.

-- Wes Headley

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