I’ve been thinking a lot about food lately, and it’s not because I’m on a diet again.
Of course, most of the people in my office are on diets, and then there’s all of this talk about suing Big Food. It’s all over the media. Jay Leno keeps making fun of it. CNN keeps doing stories about it. Even Rush Limbaugh tosses out a crumb now and then.
To me, however, something doesn’t feel right about suing restaurants or food companies for selling food that puts on weight. Maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t that the point of food? A long time ago I mastered the concept that if I consume more calories than I burn, the result is more of me.
Then the thought of suing tobacco companies once seemed odd to me as well. Everybody knew smoking wasn’t good for you. Smoker’s cough has never been a sign of good health.
Nevertheless, when my fellow lawyers proved intentional deception by Big Tobacco — which was apparently balancing the reward of excessive profits against the risk of getting caught — those suits began to make sense.
We are now hearing from class action lawyers and their experts that Big Food — anything really bad is going to be called “Big Something” from now on — did the same thing to us. Claims are emerging that the culprits are intentionally making addictive food and not telling the truth about it. Well, we’ll see.
Then there is my office. The Atkins Diet is truly a wondrous thing. It allows people who are overweight, some grossly overweight, to eat their favorite things, and all they have to do is be careful to put extra butter on every bite.
This is a dream come true for all who have repeatedly dieted unsuccessfully, or struggled hungrily, through diet after diet, only to lose a few pounds and then gain them back in roughly 24 hours. It seems like I have been asleep in a deep freeze, only to be thawed out in a future world which has rejected all the nutritional science teachings of my youth.
Now, we are told we can gorge ourselves with all the fat we want and actually lose weight. Somehow eating steak and smoked Gouda to my heart’s content just doesn’t seem natural to me. It’s too much like being in heaven, or at least in a Woody Allen movie.
Still, everybody is doing it, and Atkins’ related foods are springing up everywhere. How else can you explain the popularity of the new mediocre-tasting Michelob low-carb beer?
Although these Atkins people are riding high now (not Atkins himself, of course), I’m concerned that America’s mean cholesterol level will soon rise to 350, we are all going to get the gout, and our toes will start falling off. Then, of course, class action lawyers will go after Big Atkins. We will be told we were lied to, and, in fact, all of those sirloins were infused with extra marbles of fat just to make us want more.
These food controversies are just too complicated for me, so I’m going to go downstairs to get a nice, healthy smoothie. For no extra charge, they mix in a variety of “boosters,” including anti-oxidant boosters, flu-fighter boosters, energy boosters or multi-vitamin boosters.
I figure the drink will taste good, and there will be an added bonus. If I get the flu, I’ll have someone to sue. Has anyone done any research into class actions against Big Smoothies?