As an American I don't want a bunch of sanctimonious food Puritans telling me what I can and can't shove into my mouth. Obesity isn't a disease; it's a lifestyle choice. The American proclivity to litigate, whine, and always blame the other guy is a disease.

-- Ed Cunion

Lawmakers are deluding themselves if they think that making fast food more expensive or suing fast-food companies will lower the percentage of obesity in Americans.

I believe that there are three main reasons for the rise in obesity in America:

1. The diet industry and the pressure to be thin. I think most of us realize now that diets do not work. In fact, most people end up gaining back what they lost plus a few more pounds. It's no coincidence that as the diet industry grows, the percentage of obesity grows as well. I've been dieting for 10 years. I ended up 100 pounds heavier. I can tell you the caloric content of pretty much every food product out there. I only began to lose weight when I lost the "diet diet diet skinny skinny skinny" mentality.

2. Less time. Americans (especially children) eat more and more prepared and packaged foods. These foods are very high in calories. Have you ever looked at the nutritional information on one of those prepackaged lunches marketed to children? Ridiculous.

3. Income. It is extremely expensive to eat healthy and fresh food compared to eating canned and packaged food. One iceberg lettuce goes for around a dollar. You can buy four packages of ramen noodles for a dollar.

People are not going to start losing weight unless they stop making excuses, see their doctors, and make huge lifestyle changes. Foisting the responsibility on fast-food companies is certainly not going to help.

-- Stephanie LaCabbage

As a nation, we are getting heavier, and this represents a serious public health problem that could cost us billions upon billions of dollars. There is no doubt about this.

There are more cost-effective ways to handle this than enriching lawyers and that cottage industry of expert witnesses by suing Col. Sanders and Ronald McDonald. As a society and as individuals, we should resort to preventive and proactive solutions against America's obesity problems. The following are relatively inexpensive and may be more effective. What about nutrition education in grades 2 and 8 and mandatory K-12 physical education? What about funding for research by the Centers for Disease Control or various research institutions to study various hormones that may be responsible for obesity? How about better regional planning that reduces sprawl and encourages the use of public transportation and walking? If we're driving longer distances, that's more time we are sitting in our cars. And yes, urban sprawl has been linked to obesity.

There are so many worthwhile solutions to the obesity epidemic, and it's sad that we are looking to the legal system to bail us out instead of applying thoughtful applications from the sciences and social sciences. But, unfortunately, with politicians more interested in enriching their campaign donors (i.e., trial lawyers), it's hard to envision politicians at the national and local level discussing urban sprawl. I guess we'll see Col. Sanders in court then.

-- Jason J. Orta

Since high school I've been addicted to the nutritional labels provided on most packaged foods. Not only were they a wealth of information, but like the ingredients listed they also provided lots more questions. What exactly does Red #5 consist of? And now I notice a new food color called (euphemistically, I'm sure) Lake. There's Blue Lake and Yellow Lake and Red Lake. What is Lake and how do they put it in our food ? This brings me to the Lunchables. If you take a look at the Lunchables Nutritional Label, you find that more than one variety supplies more than 50 percent of a day's sodium and in some cases up to 40 percent of a day's saturated fat. Egads! And these are marketed for children. Are a child's daily calorie requirements more or less than the average male's? Perhaps the answer lies in a Parental Advisory Warning label much like good ol' Tipper Gore brought us with the rise of rap music. Instead of the generic black-and-white stickers they could use a little fat person icon with the red "Yahoo!" exclamation point.

-- Hutch Brown

Most anyone who's been counseled for disordered eating will tell you that addictive overeating is the toughest addiction to manage, because while you can simply eliminate trigger substances like alcohol or cocaine from your life, you can't not eat.

Anyone who has been successfully counseled for disordered eating will also tell you that they began to heal around the time they realized that their problem wasn't food, but rather, impulse control and self-acceptance issues.

To recover from obesity (barring the small minority of folks who truly suffer from non-behavior-related obesity and who were not the focus of this article), one has to first accept that one is the only person with the power to take control of the situation.

Herein lies the true danger of attempting to use litigation to solve this pandemic problem.

As our society becomes ever more permissive of litigious blame shifting, we denude ourselves of our freedom of will. To cue millions of people to believe that it's actually the fault of McDonald's for serving the Big Mac, rather than their own fault for eating two of them every day while sitting in their cars, is actually to cruelly impoverish those people already saddled with a serious health risk.

The article did not really address the myriad psychological and socioeconomic factors that contribute to most people's weight problems (another reason why litigious attacks on fast food corporations will have no effect on the problem). However, maintaining a healthy (or near healthy) weight is nothing that requires a degree, knowledge of the occult, or assistance from our legal system -- it's easily done using common sense, instinct -- and while a modicum of education can't hurt, it's really less important than plain old mindfulness of what makes your body feels good and what makes it feel bad. (I personally eat doughnuts now and then, but I know that they will make me feel sick, cranky and undernourished most times so I don't do it on a daily basis.)

It can be incredibly challenging for people with serious weight problems to become attuned to those seemingly basic physical cues (ceasing to eat when you're full, noticing that you have more energy and fewer illnesses if you eat nutrient-rich food). It seems hideously unfair to further compromise that journey back to health by creating a system that places the blame on the French fry for failing to be a baked potato, rather than encouraging people to remember that they are free to choose a baked potato and that baked potatoes are cheap, tasty, filling and great for you.

Litigation against fast-food companies (much as I am personally repulsed by them) will probably not result in one single person becoming more healthy. It will merely increase our deeply unhealthy focus on avoiding personal responsibility.

-- Amy Glynn

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