CBBC Newsround Junk food might be an addiction

"People who say they are addicted to junk food might not be fibbing, US scientists have discovered.

They carried out brain scans on hungry people and found out that junk food sparked a similar reaction to the effect of drugs on addicts."

"The findings might help the argument that junk food advertising is helping to drive the obesity problem in the US."

redux [03.12.04]
Guardian Unlimited US shields fast-food firms from obesity cases

"America's fast-food industry savoured a victory over consumer activists yesterday after Congress approved a "cheeseburger bill" to shield restaurant franchises and food firms from blame for making customers "dangerously fat"."

"However, consumer rights groups say more is at stake with the cheeseburger bill than a wake-up call for Americans to take control of poor eating habits and sedentary lifestyles. Jennifer Keller, a nutritionist on the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine, said: "The unfortunate thing is that without the threat of litigation and lawsuits, the food industry is not going to take any steps to provide healthy options.""

redux [02.16.04]
Policy Review Burgers, Fries, and Lawyers

"While plaintiffs' lawyers vigorously denounce the nutritional content of fast food, they tend to ignore the nutritional content of alternatives. Home cooking, of course, has a nice ring to it, and it is hard to criticize the idea of a traditional meal cooked by mom or dad. But if we put nostalgia aside for a moment, we can see that the typical American meal of 25 years ago might win taste contests but few prizes from today's nutritionists. Meat loaf, fried chicken, butter-whipped potatoes, and a tall glass of whole milk may have kept us warm on a cold winter evening, but such a diet would surely fail a modern test for healthy living. And let's not even discuss a crusty apple pie or bread pudding for dessert. Yesterday's comfort food gives today's dietitians indigestion. It is no surprise, then, that today's fast food derives a smaller percentage of calories from fat than a typical home meal from 1977-78. In fact, even in the 1970s, fast food meals had almost the same fat/calorie ratio as home cooking at that time. By this measure of fat/calories, fast food in the 1970s looked healthier than restaurant cooking, according to usda figures. Therefore, the caricature of fast food restaurants as a devilish place for nutrition makes little historical sense."

redux [11.10.03]
Forbes Fat Food Fight On Two Fronts

"The food fight over what do about obesity is heating up on both sides of the Atlantic as British official are mulling a ban on some television advertising aimed at children, and U.S. officials are considering whether to classify obesity as a disease as opposed to a condition, which would open the door to insurance coverage paying for treatment."

"Under some of the proposals being floated in the United Kingdom, fast-food giant McDonald's would face a ban on its sponsorship of the England football team, as would Pepsi-Cola, its co-sponsor."

redux [09.02.03]
Yahoo! News Food Fight

""Let's say you ate every meal of the year with your child and every meal you delivered a very compelling nutrition message. That's 1,000 exposures for you for every meal of the year," Brownell says. "The problem is the food industry has 10,000 exposures on television alone because the average child sees 10,000 food advertisements every year. They have Madison Avenue doing these wonderful things with animation and cartoon characters and sports heroes, so who's going to win that one?"

He adds, "It's not a fair fight and we've handcuffed parents in raising healthy children.""

Fox News Political Debate Looms Over Obesity

"Even fat is the stuff of politics in Washington. And with obesity a growing health problem, lawmakers, lawyers and activists are lining up the way they do for most issues: on two sides."

"The debate has spilled over into public policy, with proposals for a junk-food tax, limits on food advertising, demands for more details on labeling and lawsuits against food manufacturers. Several states are considering limits on sweets sold in schools; Some are debating whether to force chain restaurants to list nutrition information on menus."

NPR: Talk of the Nation Obesity, Pt. II: Government and Obesity

"Hear Part II of our series on obesity. We'll look at the politics of food -- what can and should the government be doing in the fight against fat?"

redux [07.02.03]
AZCentral Under fire, food giants switch to healthier fare

"So that's not the dinner bell you hear. It's an alarm bell raising Oreo-sized goose bumps for the giant makers of now-unfashionable sugary, fatty and calorie-laden foods. All are now faced with this new reality: As concern about obesity rises, they're within a few cookie crumbs of becoming the next Big Tobacco for trial lawyers.

"You can't stop tobacco from being unhealthy," warns Sam Hirsch, an attorney whose obese clients filed lawsuits against McDonald's. "But you can make food less unhealthy.""

NPR: All Things Considered Kraft Foods Joins the Battle of the Bulge

"Kraft Foods announces it will reduce the portion sizes of its snack foods, stop marketing to children in school and reduce fat in some of its foods. The move is aimed at helping the global fight against obesity. Hear Professor Kelly Brownell of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders."

redux [02.21.03]
The Guardian 'McFrankenstein' returns to haunt fast food chain in new court action

"Judge Robert Sweet was bluntly dismissive of the original complaint last month brought on behalf of two children from the Bronx.

But he left the door open for potential litigants if it could be proved there are dangers in eating McDonald's food that are not commonly known. He said it could be argued that Chicken McNuggets, instead of being simply chicken fried in a pan, are a "McFrankenstein creation of various elements"."

redux [07.26.02]
USA Today Lawsuit: Fast food chains caused obesity

"A man sued four leading fast food chains, claiming he became obese and suffered from other serious health problems from eating their fatty cuisine."

""They said '100% beef.' I thought that meant it was good for you," Barber told Newsday. "I thought the food was OK."

"Those people in the advertisements don't really tell you what's in the food," he said. "It's all fat, fat and more fat. Now I'm obese.""

Common Dreams Fast Food Nation: An Appetite for Litigation

"John Banzhaf likes to pose this challenge to students who enroll in his graduate class on legal activism at George Washington University, in Washington, DC. Think of something that really irritates you or smacks of obvious civil injustice, he tells them. Then think of a way of using the law to right the wrong and seek redress.

In other words, as Professor Banzhaf himself puts it with the freewheeling candor we have come to expect from both heroes and villains in the American legal system, let's sue the bastards."

ABC News Obsessed by Fast Food

"Residents of the United States spend more on fast food a year than they do movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and records combined. Americans shelled out more than $110 billion on burgers, fried chicken, and the like in 2000, compared with $6 billion in 1970."

""Fast food is really moving into schools, which is horrible, because eating habits are formed when you're young, so if you get fat then, you've started a lifelong battle," Schlosser said."

American Psychological Association Fast-food culture serves up super-size Americans

""It's important for us to look at this from a public health point-of-view, where we're not so concerned with how overweight an individual is, but how overweight the population is," said Brownell. "Genetics is what permits the problem to occur, but environment is what drives it."

Of particular concern to Brownell is America's passive acceptance of unhealthy food. Americans fail to recognize, for example, the possible damage done by such fast-food icons as Ronald McDonald. "We take Joe Camel off the billboard because it is marketing bad products to our children, but Ronald McDonald is considered cute," said Brownell. "How different are they in their impact, in what they're trying to get kids to do?""

The New York Times No Accounting for Mouthfeel
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"In the opening pages of ''Fast Food Nation,'' Eric Schlosser makes a series of observations about McDonald's. The company operates about 28,000 restaurants around the world. It's the nation's biggest buyer of beef, pork and potatoes, and the world's biggest owner of retail property. The company is one of the country's top toy distributors and its largest private operator of playgrounds. Ninety-six percent of American schoolchildren can identify Ronald McDonald. Roughly one of every eight workers in the United States has done time at the chain. The McDonald's brand is the most famous, and the most heavily promoted, on the planet. ''The Golden Arches,'' Schlosser says, ''are now more widely recognized than the Christian cross.'' Of course, McDonald's isn't alone. ''The whole experience of buying fast food,'' he writes, ''has become so routine, so thoroughly unexceptional and mundane, that it is now taken for granted, like brushing your teeth or stopping for a red light.''"