Labeling and children key if food industry to avoid legislation
breakfast cereals, one lawyer believes those behind the
anti-tobacco lawsuits are now conditioning the public to accept
obesity claims against the food industry as legitimate, Philippa
Nuttall reports.
Jennifer Hardee of California last week filed a suit in the Superior Court of California in San Diego County, stating that low-sugar cereals falsely represent "that they offer a nutritional advantage over defendants' full-sugar breakfast cereal products, when in fact, the removed sugar is replaced by other carbohydrates, thus offering no significant nutritional advantage".
The complaint, which seeks class-action status, lists the reduced-sugar versions of Post's Fruity Pebbles from Kraft, General Mills' Cocoa Puffs and Trix, and Kellogg's Frosted Flakes.
Robert Gwin, a lawyer based in the Kentucky office of Frost Brown Todd, suggested that a large part of the force behind the obesity litigation was the same as that behind the tobacco litigation.
While the food industry seems fairly calm about the most recent claim, Gwin warns that this is a "very determined group that will continue to chip away".
He added: "They are conditioning the public to accept these claims. People said the first claim against McDonalds was ridiculous, the same way people said the first claim against the tobacco industry was ridiculous".
As he points out, the government is already wary of this happening and has passed some legislation to hinder obesity lawsuits against the food industry, but it remains to be seen whether this will be taken a step further at either a state or a federal level.
Gwin doesn't think there is any need for the food industry to panic and believes that most companies are taking the necessary steps to reduce their chances of facing such legislation.
"The food industry is appropriately aware of the situation and a number of companies are trying to eliminate the problems, such as trans fats," he said.
"The tobacco industry would have loved to eliminate whatever was causing cancer, but couldn't."
Labeling is one of the keys to the food industry avoiding legislation, according to Gwin, but thinks those in the greatest danger are quick service restaurants, not processed food makers, because the former frequently still do not display the ingredients or nutritional values of their foods.
"Labeling is very important because it gives consumers a fair opportunity to make a choice," he said.
Gwin admitted he had not been following the "low-sugar" suit closely and was therefore not in a position to comment on that specific case. However, he said that the whole issue of advertising to children is very important as during the tobacco trials lots of claimants said they had become addicted to tobacco as children when they were too young to have understood that cigarettes could cause harm. A similar case could be made against the food industry.
