Issue 132 Item 4 ‘Super-Sized’ Teenagers Sue McDonald’s

McDonald’s Makes Kids Fat, Lawyers Say. Lawyers have filed a class-action lawsuit against McDonald’s on behalf of New York children who have suffered health problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. In federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, a lawyer alleged that the fast-food chain has created a national epidemic of obese children. Samuel Hirsch argued that the high fat, sugar and cholesterol content of McDonald’s food is "a very insipid, toxic kind of thing" when ingested regularly by young kids.
Their lawyer, Samuel Hirsch, said in court on Wednesday: ‘McDonald’s has the information that a child consuming this food more than one time a week may result in a child developing juvenile diabetes. (Inaccurate statement) It’s become an insipid, toxic kind of thing… Nobody thinks that going to McDonald’s can be unhealthy because they promote their foods as healthy.’

Hirsch said McDonald’s had targeted young people with offers of toys. ‘Young people are not in a position to make a choice after the onslaught of advertising and promotions,’ he said.

McDonald’s came under the spotlight after the publication of a book called Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser last year, and is bracing itself for another volume next January, Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, by Greg Crister, which is reportedly even more pessimistic and accusatory.

Jazlyn Bradley, 19, of Brooklyn, told the New York Times how she starts the day with a Super Sized McMuffin, and ends it with a Big Mac and an apple pie. The diet piled 270lb onto her 5ft 6in frame. Ashley Perlman, 14, is more of a Happy Meal girl; she likes to collect the heavily marketed free toys that come with the food.

‘The understanding and comprehension of what hamburgers and French fries do has been with us for a long time,’ he told Judge Robert Sweet, who has reserved a decision on whether to allow the suit to proceed. ‘People do not go to sleep thin and wake up next day suddenly obese. They realize it when their clothes are too tight and their pants don’t fit.’

The suits dovetails into a sharp rise in obesity in America. More than half of US adults were judged overweight by recent research; serious obesity now accounts for 280,000 deaths a year; 11 per cent of children are obese. The low price of junk food means the disease is generally entwined with poverty.