FROM THE FIELD
June 2004
Obesity Suits and the Next Big Fat Problem

Chalk up one point—or maybe two—for foodservice in the great obesity debate. But keep your eye on the other team, too. It’s still early in the game.

It’s been roughly two years since the first obesity lawsuits hit the fan. Fortunately, so far, common sense has been voting in favor of personal responsibility. A couple of the cases were thrown out, and a couple others were languishing in limbo last we heard. Meanwhile, the National Restaurant Association reports close to 30 states have introduced and/or implemented legislation that would prohibit obesity suits against food and foodservice suppliers. So score one for our side.

On another front, movie and media types have taken their own shots at the topic, with mixed results. In Super Size Me, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock made a cannonball-style splash when his documentary chronicled what happened when he ate nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days straight. In a fit of overreach, he ate something like 5,000 calories per day, gained 25 pounds and saw his cholesterol level shoot through the roof—thus proving only that a man hell-bent on overeating can do it.

Another filmmaker, Soso Whaley, also did a 30-day stint at McDonald’s, but ate like a normal human being and halfway through the month had lost five pounds. And here in suburban Chicago, Daily Herald writer Dave Orrick reported in early May that he’d done a similar two-week experiment. He ate three squares a day at McDonald’s, ate sanely and even snacked. He maintained his normal activity level. He lost three pounds.

If you were an insurance industry lobbyist, how would you play it?

So painting the overweight foodservice customer as a hapless, unsuspecting victim isn’t working.

Ultimately, though, the real underlying issue isn’t about overweight, and it isn’t about foodservice. It’s about nutrition, and overweight-related illnesses and their costs, and the entire global food-manufacturing business.

Food, particularly what global health agencies call the “high-calorie, energy-dense” kind, is everywhere in unprecedented availability. The Int’l. Association for the Study of Obesity and its Int’l. Obesity Task Force report rapid increases in overweight and obesity in such far-flung places as Samoa, Europe, South Africa and the Middle East. The IASO and IOTF, along with the World Health Organization and several U.S. health agencies, now figure about 64% of the U.S. adult population is overweight, with nearly 20% being obese. (The definitions have to do with a Body Mass Index, but for a layman’s translation, you can figure 30 lbs. overweight as obese.)

So there’s definitely a weight problem. And when you consider that overweight is clearly linked to diseases like Type II diabetes, osteoarthritis, heart disease, stroke, respiratory illnesses and more—huge healthcare costs that will become even bigger as the aged population grows—what do you think will happen?

If you were a politician, or a legislator, or an insurance industry lobbyist, or a healthcare provider, how would play it?

What the foodservice industry can do about this larger-scale issue isn’t clear. But it might be worth playing a few rounds of “what-if” so you can adapt quickly as the world changes.

Brian Ward
Chief Editor