What are your thoughts on this article that mentions a lawsuit brought by "children" aganist McDonalds for "obesity related health problems"?

I don’t disagree with you. I do see a bit of their point, though,as McDonalds insidiously advertises to children to the point they become relentless in desiring McDonalds. And once the children are allowed to venture on their own, McDonalds is a siren calling them onto the rocks of obesity.

They should sue momma & pappa for daring to call themselves parents worthy of the name.

…I’m trying to think of the last time I saw a McD’s ad targeting children? I mostly see them directed toward adults, but not children, not that I can recall. They advertised their McWraps and their salads and their Big Macs and stuff. But that isn’t really kid food.

I’m trying to remember the last time I saw a kid in McDonalds alone, too! I can’t….

This is very absurd. I blame the parents. McDonald’s (although I despise that place with ever fiber of my being) is not force feeding children their crap. They do have very suggestive commercials and have not adequately presented their nutrition facts in the past. Their food is an easy fix when one does not want to put the time and effort into cooking.

You cannot blame anything but yourself for making you or your children fat. Sure, there are a few health issues and medications that can add to weight gain, but even those do not account for any more than 25 pounds of weight gain (excluding Prader Willi syndrome). Even those disorders can be combated with a healthy lifestyle and better food choices.

McDonald’s has taken to adding the amount of calories next to the food choices on their ordering screens. Although there have been some studies that say they are not always correct, I think it is a step in the right direction and gives you an idea of what you are consuming. Nutrition labels are not very hard to read either, giving that you have a basic idea of what each category means.

The constant blame on other factors other than yourself and unfortunate circumstances for making people fat makes me livid. Nobody is force feeding horrible shit down your gullet. Contrary to popular belief, healthy food is not that hard to find or make. It is not expensive either, giving that you know what you are doing.

The parents who succumb to their children’s begging for unhealthy choices are responsible for whatever health problems they acquire. Sure, there is nothing wrong with giving your children a small dose of it once in a while, but promoting healthy choices can go a long way. By pursing cases against establishments for “making you fat”, you are telling the world that it is okay to blame others for what you have done to you or your children’s health.

I’ll always despise MacDick’s, but parents are responsible for their kids. And yeah, the parents are bringing the lawsuit, not the kids. It’s even sadder that this is probably some scheme to get money which propels the motive, rather than health.
So now I guess MacDick’s is going to have to put warnings on the wrapping and packaging; warning, may cause you to become a fatass.

I do believe that every store or business particularly dealing with food has a responsibility to the public. This could manifest in different ways, labelling all their food and drinks and even listing calorie content. Of course parents have a responsibility to their kids too. I believe food education should be given in schools. Many people for example think if they eat a salad with salad dressing on they are doing OK. Cigarettes have warnings with photographs perhaps food should too?

This isn’t a question about labeling, and actually the fast food industry DOES label their food. The calorie count is right there on the menu. You can get more detailed info on the web.

The kids do get food education in the schools. My grandkids are far more aware of what’s healthy and what’s not than I ever was. That would be thanks to Michelle Obama.

And what kind of “warning” would you suggest @LornaLove? “If you eat 5 Big Macs and 2 large fries and 3 milkshakes a day you could become obese.”

People have GOT to think for themselves.

It’s the parents’ fault.

Geez, I bring my kid to McDonald’s all the time ($2 happy meals twice a week, plus a playground. Poor mommy lottery hit!) and he’s not fat.

Not so much thought on the article but more on the lawsuit…...I have a feeling that the legal team for the McDonald’s Corporation, whoever that might include, is going to demolish the plaintiffs (the parents), in this frivilous and asinine lawsuit.

@Dutchess_III Yes like I said they should. Sorry had no idea they do that in Big Mac (contents labelling) I’ve been there twice in five years. I never felt Big Mac’s food had any taste whatsoever oddly. To me it is like eating cardboard. They could put a photograph of a dead person or a person having heart surgery exactly the same ones they use for the cigarette boxes.

If you’re feeding your kids unhealthy food, then complaining they’re unhealthy, that’s on you, not the establishment that serves the food. I’m guilty of rushing through drive-thrus sometimes, but I’d avoid them like the plague if my kids were fat.

What seriously disturbs me is seeing so many obese children shoveling McDees (and other fast food restaurants) into their mouths. We were in San Antonio last week, and I saw a kid, probably about 6 or 7 years old, who was so fat that he couldn’t see his own feet. And guess where we were…

Comparing cigarettes to food is NOT a valid comparison, @LornaLove. A Big Mac once in a while isn’t going to hurt a thing, as long as your diet over all is balanced and stable. If it isn’t, and you pig out at McDonalds AND everywhere else, including home, all the time, that’s on you. Why should one particular restaurant bear the onus for that? That’s like saying if you smoke, all the blame should be put on one particular convenience store and not the others. (Plus, I’ve never seen any photographs of any kind on cigarette boxes.)

I don’t think we can blame fast food. When I was a kid I barely could eat half a hamburger and a small fry. There were big macs and quarter pounders on the menu, but that was not what I was eating nor what my parents bought for me. Any very young child who can eat a big mac, large fries and a large coke or ice cream shake is stuffing those kids overfull all the time.

When I was a kid, ALL McD’s offered were hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, pop and milkshakes. You couldn’t go in an sit down.

LOL. Man you’re old.

KMA @JLeslie!!! My first bout with hysterical, out of control laughing happened at a McDonalds. I was, like, 8. :)

But there is a point. We kids ordered a hamburger, fries and a milkshake. My parents each ordered the same, except they got pop instead of a milk shake. My parents were never over weight.

I mean, can you imagine a grown man, 6’4” going into McDonalds today and getting a cheeseburger and small fries and that’s ALL?!

I would think that abny child that’s obese has to blame only the parent. IQ tests should be required to reproduce lol

@KNOWITALL Haha, I’ve said that before, and was brutally slapped down!

I do not blame the parents. McDonald’s spends a lot of resources on advertising and marketing, which works, and there’s a whole culture of going to McD’s for a burger, fries and drink.

Fast food itself has increased since more households have two working parents and less and less time to cook real food at home. So we see more processed microwave foods, people eating unhealthy sweet snacks from vending machines, or resorting to sugary, carb stuffed fast foods from McD and similar places.

Calorie counting itself is misleading. Ordering a starchy burger and fries and washing it down with a HFCS-laden Cola is going to do you much good regardless of calorie counting.

But whatever. Mock the parents and blame them for their lack of intelligence, while obesity and diabetes are endemic and the big food corporations and fast food chains lobby governments to block any regulations.

So who is buying the food for those kids @Kropotkin? Who is taking them to McDonalds in the first place?

@Dutchess_III Um. I don’t know. Santa Claus? No… Bill Gates. Okay. I give up. Tell me.

Oh good grief… @Kropotkin America is in the throes of a fat epidemic, and it’s not because of fast food advertising.

@WillWorkForChocolate Do try to follow everything I wrote.

Umm, yeah, totally did. That was just the only part that warranted comment. Do try to not speak to me like I’m an inattentive child in a classroom.

Edit: oh, wait, the sarcastic “mock the parents” thing should be addressed, too. When a child is literally so fat they can’t see their own shoes, it’s 100% the parents’ fault. No one is holding the parents at gunpoint, making them take their kids to a fast food restaurant.

@WillWorkForChocolate I think there’s another cultural problem in the US, and it’s called “blaming the individual” There’s this fantasy of free-will, as if people ought to be rational actors living in a vacuum, somehow impervious to systemic pressures, their culture or their society (and advertising). Actually suggesting that there’s a larger system at play is often is dismissed as some sort of leftist “social justice” rhetoric, or “making excuses” for people.

So when you (not you personally, but probably considering what I’ve seen on this thread) see people making “bad decisions”, acting against their own interests, or harming themselves somehow, you point and mock them for their stupidity. It must be a smug world up there, reproaching the less educated and less rational for their poor decisions.

In this case its obese people eating bad food, or parents taking their fat kids to McD, but I’ve heard the same in various other contexts too. Minimum wage workers, the unemployed, those who can’t afford healthcare, the homeless. etc. It’s this attitude of assuming that individuals have somehow earned and deserved the conditions they find themselves in, presumably because they “chose freely”, right?

What is it about Americans and your Mexican neighbours, the two most obese nations on the planet, that makes so many of them so uniquely stupid and irrational that they continually choose to make bad personal decisions regarding their diet?

And that article you linked was a somewhat lengthy discussion about litigation strategies, what sort of responsibilities the fast food has and should have regarding obesity, whether they’re legally accountable for obesity, how perceptions of their accountability could change in future as current fast-food litigation is dismissed as frivolous—much the same as anti-tobacco litigation was. A far cry from the trite and sarcastic way you framed it in your question.

A “fantasy of free will”???? We do have free will, and parents willingly choose to feed fat and cholesterol laden foods to their already obese children every day. When we see children like that, we should blame the parent. If not for the parent, how would the child even get to the restaurant, let alone pay for it? The parent drives them, the parent orders it, the parent pays for it, and the parent watches them eat it.

If I willingly drove myself over and stuffed myself with McDonald’s all the time and I gained fifty pounds, whose fault would it be? It would by my fault, not McDonald’s or anyone else’s. When an individual makes bad choices, the blame does rest solely on the individual.

Oh, and I’ll just assume you meant to address that last paragraph of yours to the OP, and not to me, as I didn’t post the question or any links.

@WillWorkForChocolate I’ll ask again. What is it about Americans and your Mexican neighbours, the two most obese nations on the planet, that makes so many of them so uniquely stupid and irrational that they continually choose to make bad personal decisions regarding their diet?

Yes, that last paragraph was intended for the OP. My apologies.

Laziness and negligence.

@WillWorkForChocolate Okay… so laziness and negligence are uniquely more common among Americans and Mexicans. Is it in their DNA or something? Americans and Mexicans are just unique among all the nations on the planet? You do realise that you are begging the question and not actually offering anything in the way of an explanation?

<bangs head against wall> Nevermind.

@WillWorkForChocolate Is that it? Feigning despair while providing a non-answer? I think I’m the one to be banging my head against the wall here.

No, you’re the one who seems to be deliberately obtuse and trying to pick a fight. So I’m taking some Excedrin and walking away.

@Kropotkin @WillWorkForChocolate There are countries much more obese than America. A few islands in the Pacific, over 80% of the population is obese. Also, of the nations similar to America, it isn’t like America has an extremely large lead, a lot of nations are close behind.

I think the food available in communities (both grocery and restaurants) plays a role, but I also think women going into the work place played a role [ducking to avoid being hit] designers vanity sizing clothing, and also it is like a snowball in communities, because as most people get fatter and everyone around them is overweight, it looks normal to be that weight.

@Dutchess_III Come to the UK there is a photograph on every single box. Even of dead people. Unhealthy eating causes the same effects as smoking sans the lung cancer. One cigarette day is OK, one Big Mac a day, maybe not sure.

[mod says] Flame off, folks. No need to make this personal.

@JLeslie Yes, that’s right. The Pacific Islanders are the most obese by far, and they’re something of a dietary experiment. From the brief information I read, it seems that they rely entirely on imported processed foods and have no fresh fruit or vegetables in their diet.

The food available in communities is indeed a big deal. I’m in Poland at the moment where a lot of retirees grow their own food on allotments and supply their families with significant amounts of fresh fruit and vegetables over the summer—it means that good organic food isn’t some luxury item affordable only by those on higher incomes.

And yes. I think it was one of the TEDtalks I watched a long while ago that talked about how we conform to the habits of our peers, which included getting fatter if we have other overweight people in close social contact.

The actual correlates to the obesity epidemic from what I’ve read and the lectures I’ve listened to link obesity with the increased proportion of carbohydrate intake, increased consumption of sweet drinks, and possibly the use of HFCS in those drinks (HFCS is banned here in Europe) and a lack of dietary fibre.

Now, why would people (predominantly the poor) choose to eat carb filled foods washed down with sugary drinks if it’s so bad for them? Other than the “they’re stupid” hypothesis, it could be that they’re not adequately informed, that healthier foods are inaccessible or unaffordable, that there’s not enough time or opportunity to cook fresh food (why do they have less time now?) Each of these need their own explanation in context with the historical and cultural development of what we eat and how we eat it. Changing economic pressures play their part, as does the influence and role of the food corporations and which spend vast amounts of resources on ensuring their market dominance and keeping people uninformed and reliant on their products.

And evolutionarily, we humans have a tendency to seek sugar filled high energy foods, as in our distant past this conferred a survival advantage on our species (the sugars get converted to fat.) And it is this tendency that the fast food and processed food industry takes advantage of by adding sugar to so many foods and drinks and is the biological and psychological foundation of why people “choose” unhealthy foods in the first place.

@Kropotkin Well, I grew up on Coca-cola, cookies, sugared cereals, quite a bit of pasta dishes, and my mom used plenty of margarine when she cooked. We did have a vegetable every day, sometimes from a can, and she did cook dinner every night. She never forced us to clean our plates or to eat in general. My school had pizza and tacos and hamburgers for lunch. My favorite side at school was tator tots. But, I was a skinny girl and thin teen. I swear some of these kids today are being force fed. I also think they are more bored. They get less exercise (they don’t even walk to school as much as we used to). They don’t ever wait for food, and going along with that is the family not eating together for dinner. I don’t believe in being very hungry between meals, I don’t mean that, but we are raising children who don’t even know what it is like to be a little hungry and I think they don’t develop the habit of eating when hungry, they eat for different reasons. Fat kids develop into fat adults quite often. But, even thin kids tend to gain weight inntheir 30’s and 40’s+ I certainly put on some weig as an adult.

You say Europe doesn’t allow some of that “bad” stuff. How high are the besity rates in Europe? I know the UK is pretty high. I don’t know the stats for other countries. Plus, I think we should also look at overweight numbers, not just obesity.

@JLeslie The UK is the highest in the EU at 23%.

It’s a similar story. Workplaces installing vending machines with snacks. Families having little time to cook for themselves. Poor people relying on cheap processed foods.

Indeed it isn’t just the obesity rates. It’s the rates at which people are overweight in general, and also the endemic rates of diabetes, which can affect skinny people just the same. We’re not all the same, and some people can remain quite skinny regardless of what they eat, but it’s still doing them long-term harm.

@Kropotkin Very few people actually have a metabolism outside of the norm where they stay skinny when everyone else would be fat on the same diet and exercise, I am definitely not talking about those people. The portion sizes are drastically different now. Young children eat adult sized portions. Fat people tend to eat much much more food from what I have observed. Their plate is larger and fuller.

In the last 15 years or so, they even added a Super Size kids meal, called a “Mighty Kids’” meal. Double cheeseburger, larger portion of fries, bigger drink, no apples as far as I know, and you still get a toy.

Relevant…ish

@Seek_Kolinahr When I was little I could not even finish the original size. I think you can always substitute apples for fries can’t you? Doesn’t matter. Apples were not available when I was a kid, that’s a new thing.

Excellent. Super-size kids/adult meals should require wrappings with tobacco packaging-like warning messages such as overeating can slow blood flow and cause cancer, strokes and impotence.

@LornaLove I don’t live in the UK. I don’t buy cigarettes in the UK. I have never seen any photographs on the boxes of cigarettes I buy here.

I agree that the advertising and the “Super size” BS can affect what people eat—IF they allow themselves to get sucked in to it! I’ve gone to a fast food restaurant and just ordered a cheeseburger. I’ve had clerks act surprised when I said I didn’t want any fries with my food.

Nobody MAKES people order and eat what they eat. We all have a brain we can use to combat the advertising.

According to your logic @Kropotkin, nothing is anybodies fault. We’re all mindless victims of outside forces.

I’m pretty sure the US went through another vanity sizing change about 6 years ago. I think that is a mistake. I don’t know if the UK has done the same recently. I know previously a UK 10 was like our 8. Now I bet it’s like our 6.

@Dutchess_III I think the “value” is irresistible to some people. Did we have combo meals when we were young? I don’t remember them. I remember the first time I heard of a Happy Meal. I think I was around 12 years old? But, I don’t think there were other combo meals yet? We didn’t eat fast food much, so I could easily be wrong.

It’s the same with shoe sizes, over here i’m a size 9, in eeh-merry-ka i’d be a 10.

@Dutchess_III I don’t wish to digress into a philosophical discussion regarding free will and fatalism, but one doesn’t need to be a fatalist to recognise that we’re a social and cultural species, and that our attitudes, motivations, and consequently the sort of decisions we make, involve inputs from the world around us.

I think this much is a truism, and I state it in contrast to the earlier view posited which suggested that our decision making is somehow separated from and independent of external influences. A view I find to be patently ridiculous— but also one that often leads to callous mockery of those who make “bad choices” with little regard for why they did, and what influences and circumstances may have been in place to make those “bad choices” more likely.

My 9 year old daughter gets the MIghty Kids meal about twice a month. It has apples. She can eat, and eat and eat and eat, but she manages to stay skinny. Maybe she’s one of those people who can eat and stay slim, but we also keep her very active in sports and dance. Too many children these days don’t get enough exercise and they don’t eat enough meals prepared from scratch at home.

McDonalds is not the cause of the obesity problem in children, poor parenting is. I know a family that lives across the street and a few houses down from the grade school. The mom drives the children to school. Guess what? The children are overweight. There’s also a family I know and everyone in the family is obese. Guess what mom posts on her Facebook all the time, Paula Deen type recipes. These parents need to get off their ass and show their children how to take better care of their bodies. It’s not McDonalds responsibility.

@JLeslie No, there were no value meals when we were young. Like I said, all they offered at one point were cheese burgers, hamburgers, fries, pop and milk shakes. Those were the only options one had!

As for the word “value”...I agree. American’s are pretty money conscious. If you buy a hamburger for $1.00 and french fries for $1.00 and a coke for $1.00, all separately, then it’s $3.00. Well, if you can get the same exact thing for $2.50 just by saying “I’ll take a number 2,” it would be tempting. I agree. But in reality, if you’re concerned about money, get JUST the hamburger for $1.00! Again, we have to think for ourselves.

Does anyone remember the McD’s specials they were running a couple of years ago? They shot themselves in the foot and it didn’t last long. I’ll try to approximate it as best I can. It was like this, a sausage and cheese biscuit was $1.30. Add an egg and it’s $2.30. However, if you specifically said, “I want a sausage, egg and cheese busciut with no egg,” you could get a sausage and cheese biscuit for $1.00! They had several specials like that, thinking we wouldn’t catch on. I wasn’t the only one who figured it out, though. Once this guy in line in front of me placed a really convoluted order for several items that way. He turned around and looked at me kind of desperately and said, “I know it’s crazy but that’s how I have to order them to save the money!”
I just grinned and told him I knew exactly what he meant, and that I did it too. He was very relieved!
Like I said, those deals didn’t last long.

When I had the shop I instructed my guys to ask , “You want fries with that?” What I meant was to ask the customer, “Since we have your unit in for this problem, you want us to go ahead and tune it up?” They almost always said “Yes.”

Maybe the cure is McD’s employees finally getting paid a higher minimum wage, food prices going up, no more combo meals, and people will buy less.

@jonsblond As much I don’t judge people who are overweight (meaning I don’t assume anything about them as a person. I don’t associate obesity with being stupid or disorganized or any of the negatives some people do) when I see them eating huge helpings, or always obsessing about food, always adding cheese and butter to everything, it is hard for me to watch. It isn’t a big mystery usually why people are fat. I do have empathy for once overweight it is very difficult to change eating habits. I would love to lose a few pounds myself, but sometimes it is so extreme. My dad eats a tremendous amount of food, he looks like he is going to pop. He is obsessed with food, I think it is one of his few pleasures.

“It isn’t a big mystery,” exactly.

McDonald’s did stop the supersizing I think. After the documentary Spurlock did.

I do think McDonald’s every day will most likely make you fat. Same if you make the same foods at home. People who eat at McDonald’s every day probably are not making the healthier choices they offer. A person who leans towards a heathier diet would be frustrated at Mcd’s I think if they had to eat there days or weeks on end.

The biggest thing is, you aren’t going to go home at lunch and cook a burger, cut up fries and fry them, and make a milkshake. Lunch USED to be a sandwich and left overs from home. Now it’s….a Big Mac +. Too easy.

@Dutchess_III Exactly. And, now we have microwave foods at home. The microwave probably directly correlates with weight gain in America I bet? I wonder if that stat exists?

I don’t know…I only really use it to thaw things out, almost never to actually cook my food (sometimes a baked potato or to warm up my homemade burritoe.) Like, we have some pot pies in the freezer…I’ll bake them before I’ll nuke them, even if I have to wait an extra 30 minutes….wait! It’s unhealthy to be hungry even for a little while! Must. Eat. Now!

Hmmm. That is an interesting thought @JLeslie.

And you know what? I’m starving! I’ve been up since 8 (it’s 11) and I haven’t eaten.

@dutchess, get a mcdouble, with shredded lettuce and mac sauce. $1 Big Mac.

@Dutchess_III A lot of people microwave a meal every day. You tend to eat fast food a lot during the week, they eat fast food at home. Same difference. Still a convenience item that isn’t leafy green veggies and fruit.

Leafy green veggies are expensive and they spoil quickly. Ditto fruit.

I can’t afford to buy food I’m going to have to throw away if I don’t eat it the day I buy it.

Yeah, it’s an interesting thought. I don’t, just because it tastes insipid to me. But it’s the same concept. Eat fast. Microwaveable food is definitely going to have more “preservatives” in it too. (I’m cooking that wicked pot pie in the oven as we speak! I want to make my own now. :)

Oh! Good idea @Seek_Kolinahr! But….even a McDouble is too much food for me.

BTW, hint, if you core your lettuce (smash the stem end on the sink edge really HARD—trick I learned when working for Taco Tico :) put a little water in the cavity, then wrap it in a paper towel, dampen the towel, then put it back in the plastic it will last a lot longer. Ditto with celery, except you don’t have to core it.

Oh yeah, also forgot to mention low calorie and not filling.

@Seek_Kolinahr Some fruits and veggies don’t go bad in a day. I have clementines in my fridge that will be good for a week or two. Apples during season can last for weeks in the fridge. Carrots last for weeks. Cucumbers a good week. Roasted veggies I can keep for 5 or 6 days and just add them to meals. Necatarines and plums 3–4 days. Canteloupe a few days. Bananas 3–4 days (I refrigerate them when they hit almost completely yellow). I buy a $7 salad at Sweet Tomatoes and it is two meals for me, although I eat it within two days.

I am spending less money having cut out most meat from my meals prepared at home. Athough, I agree cheap fast food can sometimes be cheaper than food at home.

Yeah, they’re better with other foods, obviously.

Nectarines are$1.99 a pound usually. To dear for my food budget.

In my house, fresh fruit is a special treat we get when I find a good sale. Maybe a couple of times a month.

@Seek_Kolinahr How many nectarines does that work out to? If you had a meal of fruit and vegetables how much would you actually eat? A large banana is pretty filling. What does that cost 50¢? Sure you will be hungy again within two hours, so then you have another $2 or $3 of something else. Pasta and rice are extremely cheap. Tomato sauce, some mushrooms. Add some green beans or zuchinni. If you think you need to add fat to feel more satiated you can do that.

Currently, I’m focusing on protein and carbs.

We eat a lot of rice, pasta and beans. Meat when I can afford it. There is a grocery store that discounts it’s meat the day it expires. That’s the only way I buy it now.

Ideally, I spend no more than $5 a day to feed the three of us. And that’s pushing it.

I want to start making my own bread again, but I need a week where I can afford all the ingredients and still eat real food for the rest of the week.

Try this some time: A large flour tortilla. Put a little cream cheese on it first (or not) then refried beans, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, green onions, salsa. Wrap it up. Poke holes in it. As for me, I’m a cheese freak so I smother it with cheese. Nuke it for 2 minutes. It’s really, really good. If I’m really hungry I can eat 2 and not have to worry so much about calories. It’s something I made up when I went on my “diet” 25 years ago.
I was making burritos for the family one time. My husband saw mine, which was packed and bulging and complained why didn’t his look like that? I opened it back up and showed him it was mostly the lettuce and tomato, and there weren’t nearly as much beans as there were on his. He said, “Ew! Nevermind!”
I mentioned it to an obese friend, but I inadvertently used the word “Diet burrito.”
She said, “Diet burrito? EW!” Of course, she never tried it.
They’re crazy!! It’s good.

@Seek_Kolinahr LOL! $5.00 a day? I was the same way. But you know, according to some IT CAN’T BE DONE!!! Yes, it can.

I love a good microwave quesadilla!

Let’s hear it Seek!

@Seek_Kolinahr That definitely is a tight budget. I too would do whatever necessary to get me through and not worry so much about what type of food. Probably if I were eating on $5 a day my food intake would be so much less I still would be taking in very little cholesterol and fat, unless I was eating eggs every day. I would pop a Flinstones vitamin though.