The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), which has long agitated for wider government intervention in food and nutritional matters, has filed a lawsuit charging that McDonald’s is violating California consumer laws by marketing Happy Meals with toys. It wants to force the burger chain either to drop the toy, or to replace the meals’ food components with something more whole-grain-and-vegetable-y. The New York Daily News invited me to have my say on the controversy, and I did. I pointed out that the lawsuit seemed to be aimed at an end run around the reality of individual choice:
No one forced [named plaintiff Monet] Parham to take her daughters to McDonald’s, buy them that particular menu item, and sit by as they ate every last French fry in the bag (if they did).
No, she’s suing because when she said no, her kids became disagreeable and “pouted” – for which she wants class action status. If she gets it, McDonald’s isn’t the only company that should worry. Other kids pout because parents won’t get them 800-piece Lego sets, Madame Alexander dolls and Disney World vacations. Are those companies going to be liable too?
The center’s [CSPI’s] longtime shtick is to complain that businesses like McDonald’s, rather than our own choices, are to blame for rising obesity. So let’s take Happy Meals as an example. When you buy one, you get a string of choices. Milk or soda? (Is that really a hard choice for a parent worried about nutrition?) You can swap out the fattening French fries for “apple dippers” with caramel sauce and plenty of kid appeal. But your choices do not end there. If you think the scoop of fries is too big for a kid serving, you can tell the kid to share it with the grownup on hand, namely you. (You’re the grownup. You make the rules.) You can even, shocking as this sounds, toss the surplus French fries into the disposal bin.
…[I]t’s unlikely that even California courts will approve this suit. But in the mean time, the Center for Science in the Public Interest will fatten off the publicity, unattractively.
You can read the whole thing here. As I’ve noted at my website Overlawyered, the case is one element in a wider campaign that includes newly enacted bans on Happy Meals in San Francisco and nearby Marin County. In June, California blogger Bruce Nye predicted that CSPI would try to build on a 1983 California Supreme Court precedent, Committee on Children’s Television, Inc. v. General Foods Corp., that invites suits over advertising to kids that is purportedly “predatory,” but that they’d run into trouble proving (as the law has required since California voters passed Prop 64 in 2004) that its client, Ms. Parham, is “a person who has suffered injury in fact and has lost money or property” owing to the advertising. Even under California law, having to say “no” to one’s kids is not a legal injury.