azlyn Bradley loved her McDonald's Super Sized. A McMuffin in the morning and the Big Mac meal with an apple pie in the evening was standard operating procedure.Posted on 11/21/2002 12:49:06 AM PST by sarcasm
azlyn Bradley loved her McDonald's Super Sized. A McMuffin in the morning and the Big Mac meal with an apple pie in the evening was standard operating procedure.
Ashley Pelman was more of a Happy Meal girl. She liked the prizes.
Ms. Bradley is 19 years old, 5-foot-6 and 270 pounds. Ms. Pelman, 14, is 4-foot-10 and weighs 170.
Now, the two teenagers are suing the McDonald's Corporation and the two Bronx franchises they frequented for damages related to their obesity. Yesterday, a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan heard a motion to dismiss the case presented by lawyers for McDonald's.
The judge, Robert W. Sweet, has not ruled on the motion, and the case has yet to reach trial. But the idea of suing McDonald's, and fast food companies in general, for health problems like obesity and diabetes that may stem from the consumption of their products has been an issue of great concern for the industry for months now. McDonald's and restaurant industry officials say the teenagers' lawsuit is the first to find its way into a courtroom.
"Within the industry, it has gotten everyone's attention," said Steven C. Anderson, the president of the National Restaurant Association, which represents 858,000 businesses across the country, from small cafes to large chains like McDonald's. He said that while his membership is concerned about such lawsuits, the organization finds them frivolous.
At the heart of the lawsuit brought by Ms. Pelman and Ms. Bradley is whether McDonald's is responsible for their obesity because it did not provide the necessary information about the health risks associated with its meals. If their lawyer, Samuel Hirsch, makes it to trial with the suit, he hopes to turn it into a class action on behalf of all New York children under age 18 who claim health problems they say resulted from eating at McDonald's.
The company's lawyers argued yesterday that the case did not even warrant the court's attention, saying the matter was really about common sense and individual responsibility.
"Every responsible person understands what is in products such as hamburgers and fries, as well as the consequences to one's waistline, and potentially to one's health, of excessively eating those foods over a prolonged period of time," the lawyers wrote in their motion to have the case dismissed.
Saying this knowledge has been well known for generations, they quoted Benjamin Franklin ("To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals") and Henry David Thoreau ("There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and for mere gluttony").
But Mr. Hirsch said the chain's billion-dollar advertising campaign encourages children to find their inner glutton.
"Young individuals are not in a position to make a choice after the onslaught of advertising and promotions," Mr. Hirsch said in an interview.
Walt Riker, a spokesman for McDonald's, denied that McDonald's makes children a target of its advertising. "No one cares more about kids than McDonald's," he said.
Neither side argues with the fact that America's waistline is expanding, at a time when a "small" size is a rarity on coffee shop or fast food menus. According to a study conducted last year by the surgeon general, 61 percent of Americans are overweight and 14 percent of adolescents ages 12 to 19 are overweight — a figure that has tripled over the last two decades.
Defenders of the fast food industry point to changes in lifestyle that have made Americans more sedentary, while Mr. Hirsch and others say the problem has more to do with what he called the "supersize culture" of the fast food industry.
Ms. Bradley's order of a Big Mac with Super Size fries and Super Size Coke contains 1,600 calories. According to the United States Department of Agriculture's dietary guidelines in 2000, the recommended total daily allowance for older children, including teenage girls, is 2,200 calories.
Ms. Bradley's father, Israel, who now lives with his daughter in Brooklyn, said he never saw anything in the McDonald's restaurants he visited providing information about the ingredients in the food, according to court documents. "I always believed McDonald's was healthy for my children," he said in an affidavit.
Mr. Riker said McDonald's makes nutritional information available in a variety of ways, including brochures and posters and on its Web site.
On a visit yesterday to the McDonald's on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx, one of those named in the lawsuit, the listing of ingredients in the food could not be found at all.
But patrons did not seem concerned as they ate Big N' Tasty Burgers washed down with Super Size Cokes, and children were welcomed by a smiling Ronald McDonald outside the Playplace. Most said they found the lawsuit absurd.
Have these people every heard of cereal ???
Have her parents actually tried cooking dinner in their own home ?? This girl should sue her parents first .. they were the ones that bought for her
McDonalds didn't go to her house and force her to eat thier food
Here's a suggestion .. Take responsibility for your OWN actions
What means this?
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I'll take a home made roast beef sandwich on buttered rye bread with lettuce and tomato, salt and pepper; a (Vlasic) garlic dill pickle on the side, and a 12 oz. glass of whole milk.
Will we soon be seeing warning labels on MacD's wrappers?
is there a possibility these two girals are eating for two?
Would that really be so bad? I would get a kick out of that.
Well since the warning labels seem to proceed the additional "special" taxes and governmental restrictions to protect us from ourselves, I don't get quite the same kick as you do.
Warning: Continuing to reward morons for their stupidity is detrimental to our national health.
That's your choice. (And a wise one.)
However, the operative word is choice. I don't want mine limited simply because others are unable to exercise even a modicum of self-control.
Who drove their kids to Mcdonalds....because if they walked there or rode their bikes, they wouldn't be so fat.
WHO gave them money to buy this food?
PARENT'S FAULT!
Oh, but what about all of the character education they receive in school, the nutrition/health education, the life choices education, the 'resisting-peer-pressure' education? Has all of that empowered kids with savvy independence and critical thinking skills (as the schools advertise) or left them mind-numbed robots with no choice but to buy whatever they see on TV? Makes a person wonder.
The fast food companies are last on the list to blame for such outrageously stupid people- Mr. Hirsch included.
Well, my belt notches tell me beer's making me watch too much sports.
The out of control crooked lawyer industry fully expects to make themselves into super-sized billionaires, like their business associates, the tobacco billionare tort bar.
And yet they KNOW what is BEST for the American people. Astounding.
I always believed McDonalds was healthy for my children.
You sir, are a moron.
I'd say The Culture of Victimhood is quite successful. Now people aren't even responsible for that which they eat. It's someone else's fault if they repeatedly put something bad for them in their mouths. Time for The Nanny State to step in and mandate the food we eat each day.
We've become a society of overgrown two year-olds.
That's a rhetorical question, isn't it? (Even though you had !!! marks afterwards and not ??? marks)
Since Joe Camel was targeted, I knew it was a matter of time before the ambulance chasers went after Ronald McDonald. I made a prediction to this effect some time ago here on FR. I also predicted they will go after the Pillsbury Doughboy as well.
1. What would he think was in burgers and fries?
2. He didn't notice that his daughter was getting a little heavy sometime before she reached 270 pounds? He didn't have a clue that what the daughters were eating might have something to do with how fat they were getting? Like he would have understood the concept of calories, fat, carbohydrates, and protein if he had been told.
3. Hope that his daughters never get to the point of buying beer. No warning on those beer cans that "Warning ** This intoxicating beverage may make you intoxicated -- and fat". Or do they? -- haven't bought one for a long time.
4. Maybe fast food employees should be trained like bartenders to refuse to serve anyone that looks like they have had enough?
The acorn falls not far from the tree.
I use the microwave and you can get pretty good frozen pancakes. And there is a warning to remove the pancakes from the package before cooking. And you can't turn the microwave on without removing your hand first. So, I think the dad could handle it.
You mean McDonald's advertising is so effective as to be mind control? Their ads somehow eliminate a person's ability to make competent judgments about the health affects of super sized burgers and fries?
Only the anticipation of a multi-million dollar payoff could motivate an intelligent grown man to make such a patently absurd statement as that above.
You mean McDonald's advertising is so effective as to be mind control? Their ads somehow eliminate a person's ability to make competent judgments about the health affects of super sized burgers and fries?
Only the anticipation of a multi-million dollar payoff could motivate an intelligent grown man to make such a patently absurd statement as that above.
Those who look good in lingerie wear lingerie.
Those who DON'T, sue McDonalds.
Never before in the history of the USA has one judge held the future of America in his hands so clearly as Judge Sweet.
He not only should dismiss the case with extreme predjudice, he should jail the lawyers for filing it in the first place.
If he allows this to go to trial, the USA is DOOMED.
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Where is the judge who will finally put a stop to this nonsense by fining the plaintiff's attorney into bankruptcy for wasting the court's time with this kind of frivolous use of state power?