h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Actually it is considered that highly refined foods that are high in sugar,salt and fat are addictive.I read a lot about food and nutrition as I too have a weight problem and it is an accepted fact that this combination in highly processed fast food is addictive.Of course being overweight is a disease both physical and mental and so exercising self control is very,very hard and difficult.If you can excercise such self control then good luck to you,you obviously do not have a weight problem.Most of the battle to lose weight has to be won in the mind before it has any effect on the body.Please remember even the most intelligent and erudite people can find it diffucult to lose weight.

Well that's what I tell myself everytime I slip on my perpetual diet that I've been on since 1976.What I resent is the continual feeling guilty everytime I do slip.

Incog.

But you don't sue somebody because of your lack of self-control. That's the difference.

I agree actually.This should also apply to those who sue the tobacco industry too.Or those who perform dangerous stunts.You could go on and on.Sometimes somewhere big business's have to be accountable though.I'm all for everything we buy to use or eat being CORRECTLY labelled with the information we require to make informed choices.If we then choose not to read it or to pay any attention to it it should then be our lookout.

Incog.

Regarding the story that Blues Shark posted the link to:

This guy had plainly been overweight for some time, he didn't just balloon up one day. He plainly realised that what he was doing was damaging his health and he *didn't stop*. As far as I can see, he's just fishing for excuses.

If this man had been in good health, gone into a fast-food restaurant and ordered and eaten a meal and then suffered a heart-attack two days later (yes, I know it wouldn't happen, but this is a rhetorical point) and then sued the fast-food company for not stating it's food was unhealthy then he would have had a good case. As it was he kept eating this stuff, saw his health deteriorate, ignored it until he was seriously ill and then tried to blame someone else.

About the article posted by blues shark, it seems this guy isn't in it for the money. If the article is to be believed, he is just trying to force the fast food companies to clean up thier act and provide proper information on the fat salt and energy content of thier food.

FYI as incog mentioned earlier refined fat and salt is addictive, i've forgotten my neuroscience but there is an area in the brain which is involved in controling your food intake. In times of plenty it is set (or by over eating fatty and sugary foods) it is reset to a higher level of food intake. When you try and diet this area is still set to "tell" you to eat the higher amount of food giving you cravings. So when dieting not only do you have to overcome the physical belly rumble but also a mental craving, in other words its a bit like withdrawing drugs from an addict if thats not an addiction I dont know what is( unlike other addictions where withdrawl means total abstenence, you cannot do this with food so it requires an enormous amount of effort).

As you can probably guess I used to have a weight problem and it is still a constant battle to keep it off.

Again, I support anyone who attempts to put the fast food giants in line.

Just as a side note - my son has just been 'prescribed' visits to MAcDonalds and other 'junk' food places.

Literally 6 hours ago we were with his peadiatrician, and the subject of his weight came up (as usual). The medication that he is on means that he has no appetite, and once again he has grown upwards, and inwards. So the told me to let him eat fast food. He said that it's junk because it's high in calories - which is just what my son needs. So here I am, standing up for fast food. My only worry is that while *he* needs calories, *I* don't.

Mina- the doc's told you your son needs calories, which McDonald's is high in- so, he gets to go there, but you're not going to feed him on nothing *but* Maccy D's are you- no, that would be daft, so you are taking the advice given, and also applying your own common sense. Why couldn't Mr. Barber do the same?

Anyway, that wasn't the post I was looking to reply to-

Let's have a look at Mr. Barber's story:
(incidently, does anyone know how tall the chap is? It's all very well to say 19stone, but it's hard to gauge how overweight he is without his height)

"Does anyone really believe that Mr Barber was too dumb to know that gorging himself on saturated fat was less healthy than ordering, say, a fruit dish or a chef salad?"

So, his supporters say he's smart enough to know what types of food are healthy, and which aren't. Good. Yet:

"Actually, Barber contends he was in the dark about the nutritional content, or lack thereof, of the fast food he was eating up to five times a week from the 50s onwards."

So then, we know fruit and salads are good for us, but *not* that burgers are junkie s**t? Hell, surely even the fact it's described as 'junk food' should give the chap a hint? Maybe in the 50s, it wasn't public knowledge that the stuff is really bad for you, but it has been for the past twenty years or more. Barber clearly has some idea of nurtional value, so, to my mind, if he honestly didn't realise the stuff was really bad for him, he's either dumb, or kept himself wilfully ignorant.


"Incredibly, he didn't even stop gobbling burgers and salty fries after his first heart attack in 1996."

Say *what*?

"In his lawsuit... he contends that deceptive advertising misled him about the nutritional value of the food, until a doctor pointed it out."

The Doctor did tell him it was bad for him. He kept eating. My sympathy just ran out. I know smoking's bad for me- I still do it, that's my choice. It is no longer Drum's fault if I get sick, it's mine. Equally, if the doctor told him it was bad for him, then the industry is absolved of blame- he knew

"It's all fat, fat and more fat. Now I'm obese."
Well, duh? It's fried. In fat. Or grilled. In fat. How couldn't it be full of fat?

"They said 100% beef. I thought that meant it was good for you."
No, that just means it doesn't have sawdust in it. Do you think something labelled as "100% chocolate is good for you?

"Mr Barber honestly didn't know what the dangers were when he got hooked on fast food in the 50s," says his lawyer, Samuel Hirsch"
Quite possibly he didn't know in the 50s. He knew in the 80a, he knew in the 90s.

He is also at pains to point out that Barber's goal is not money... but to get the chains to inform customers that their food is guilty of expanding their waistlines. "

What kind of dumbF**k *doesn't* know junk food in excess without exercise will make you fat?

"We want the chains to disclose the calorie, fat and sodium content of all their products."

They do.

"Specifically, Barber's lawsuit says that fast-food restaurants negligently and recklessly engage in the sale of food that is high in fat, salt, sugar and cholesterol content, which studies show cause obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, high bloodpressure, strokes, raised cholesterol intake and related cancers."

For Heaven's sake, it's not force-fed down your neck."recklessly"? "negligently"? So now fast food joints are responsible for ensuring their customer's health? Hell, I hope that doesn't make its way across the food/drink industry, or my local will be stopping me from getting pissed in case I damage my liver

"But Steven Anderson of the National Restaurant Association says public awareness about balanced eating - due to government schemes and a culture obsessed with being thin - has never been higher, and anyone suggesting that McDonald's has duped them into having a heart attack has to be joking."

Thank you, a voice of reason in this Grauiad article.

The NRA being the body that has done the most to put pressure on government committee's, health foundations, and the like to water down the findings of those commitee's about the fast5 food industry.

Does the term 'vested interest' ring any bells here?

Whilst in the bakers' the other day (buying a big huge unhealthy cream cake, as it happens), I happened to glance at the ingredients of your average Scotch pie. 20% meat. The rest made up of fat, gristle and who knows what else.

I'm so happy I'm vegetarian!

Wether or not the body making the statement has any vested interests in the matter is neither here nor there- I haven't, and I agree with it.

A smal point, and one that has been gone over many times here. KerrAvon, you said:

>>"We want the chains to disclose the calorie, fat and sodium content >>of all their products."

>>They do.

Well, they might if you ask for the leaflets, or go and hunt out the advertising blurb that plays up the positives and plays down the negatives, and then read it with a super-critical eye. What they don't do is put the information on the packaging in a form that is easy to understand. Why not? Is it that they don't really want you to know what it is you are eating, just in case you decide that may a sandwich might be healthier and don't buy their product next time?

It would be very easy for McD's and BK and KFC and all the rest to print that stuff on the specialised boxes they have for each product but they don't. Again I ask why not?

k

Boxes that McDonalds can't even make out of easily recyclable stuff like cardboard. And yes, I know their polystyrene *is* recyclable, I just wonder how much of it is once it leaves on the take-out happy trail?

Ok, so where do you stand on their continued efforts to ensure reports and committee findings are watered down and effectively falsified, KerrAvon. Still have a non-vested dis-interest in that as well?

That's a good question - it's European law to label every food product you buy in Tesco's and the rest, so how come it's not compulsory for fast food outlets too? And I'm not just talking about McDonalds and the like either...

And, while I sit here, let us never forget that one of the comments that McDonalds claimed was libellous (ie UNTRUE, A LIE and damaging to McD's reputation) in the McLibel trial was the comment that;

"a diet high fat, sugar, animal products, and salt...is linked with cancers of the breast and bowel, and heart disease."

The Appellate court told McDonalds they were wrong, and that the above staement was true. But if not for that case, how long would McDonalds have carried on denying that?

One parallel that leaps out at you is that between the cases pending at the moment and the lawsuits against Big Tobacco in the early 90s. But the situation is actually quite different. Phillip Morris et al were sued ultimately as a result of the fact that their product caused cancer, and they had repeatedly supressed this information. Now cancer is quite a bit different from obesity, am I right? It took years of research to ascertain the link. Cancer is a specialist subject. But the whole fat-obesity connection? It's taught in first and second-level schools all over the world. It's not rocket science. The f/f industry cannot *withold* the information, only downplay it.

I see no problem calling the litigants ignorant. The definition in my dictionary calls ignorance 'lack of information or knowledge'. If the litigants aren't ignorant, then, their entire case falls apart. It's the source of their ignorance that is the problem.

"It would be very easy for McD's and BK and KFC and all the rest to print that stuff on the specialised boxes they have for each product but they don't. Again I ask why not?"

I guess because they are not legally required to do so. And they should be. I repeat for emphasis, they should be. I just find this an especially dubious way of setting a precedent. After Barber had suffered his heart attack, wouldn't the sensible thing to do be to find out the nutritional content of the junk that was a major part of his diet? Even if it meant asking for leaflets?

>so how come it's not compulsory for fast food outlets too?<

I believe that they are obliged to make the information available. There's usually a stack of leaflets somewhere within the restaurant with it in, you can ask a member of staff for a copy.

There was an article in last week's New Scientist about types of fat and their relation to depression. I've left my copy with Mrs SM in the hospital - not that she reads it. The blurb on the NS site says:
"THE HAPPY FAT
Are we eating our way into a collective depression? If so, there's an easy way out, says Meredith F. Small. With the right balance of fats in our diet, maybe we can ditch the antidepressants"


Liam.

Although the information is there on request, I once asked a counter assistant in Burger King for a leaflet, and she gave me a blank look. Didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I didn't press it because the poor girl was harassed with the busy queues and funnily enough, there wasn't one of the numerous 'managers' to be seen.

I eventually found out what goes into my veggie burger thanks to the Vegetarian Society, but that's only because they have personally approved the BK veggie burger. You ask for the same thing in McDonald's and it's the same old story. Sure, we the consumer know the information is there for us on request, but the poor staff seem to be more ignorant than us in that respect

Brilliant - I am not trying to deny anyone access to litigation, but this case is costing evey person in the country, and its not the only one. You and I are paying by longer waits for the courts, criminals walking the streets on bail whilst awaiting court time, higher legal costs due to the shortage of people in the legal proffesion. I know addiction is tough - I couldn't stop smoking until I had a heart attack, but I didn't go round saying Phillip Morris were at fault - I knew it was my own stupid fault. This case is an excuse for some legal people to get very rich and for someone to try to escape the consequences of his own actions. (Nothing new there then.)

I'm not, love. Not my country.
However, MaccyD's are more or less forcing unimaginative pap as acceptable on people in general, killing off variety and competition in equal measure. They also putrefy our television screens with superficially 'caring' adverts, inducing nausea in 'anyone higher up the evolutionary ladder than a demented bee'. In this country the health service has to support the obese (and those with tobacco-related problems,) and losing money through them, regardless of whose fault it is, and personally I'd rather have the litigation.

(first to ID the quote wins some chips).

There are some interesting nuggets (heheh!) hidden in the backlog. Was it Kelli who had an even worse time trying to find a leaflet?

I'm not in favour of multi-national corporations and the global economy, I just long for some commonsense in the world. (Q. if its so 'common' why is it so rare ?) I'm also against lawyers, who I believe are destroying justice. (And so many of whom work for afore-mentioned multi-nationals.) I agree MaccyD have a lot to answer for, but I don't think that makes this case right.