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Lawsuit
seeks to ban sale of Oreos to children in California Monday,
May 12, 2003 San
Francisco Chronicle Kim
Severson Oreo cookies
should be banned from sale to children in California, according to a lawsuit
filed by a San Francisco attorney who claims that trans fat -- the stuff that
makes the chocolate cookies crisp and their filling creamy -- is so dangerous
children shouldn't eat it.
Stephen Joseph,
who filed the suit against Nabisco last week in Marin County Superior Court, is
a public interest lawyer who last battled the city to remove graffiti from
traffic signs. He took up the
trans fat battle after reading about the dangerous artificial fat in several
stories published by The Chronicle that showed how trans fat is hidden in many
of the popular snack foods Americans eat. Joseph also believes his father's
death from heart disease was caused in part by a lifelong diet of margarine and
other foods made from trans fat. The suit, the
first of its kind in the country, asks for an injunction ordering Kraft Foods to
desist from selling Nabisco Oreo Cookies to children in California, because the
cookies are made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, also called trans
fat.
Partially
hydrogenated oil is in about 40 percent of the food on grocery store shelves,
including most cookies, crackers and microwave popcorn, according to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. But
doctors and government researchers believe it is linked to several debilitating
diseases and might be one of the worst ingredients in the American diet -- in
part because we eat so much of it without knowing. The Institute of
Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, last summer confirmed
that trans fat is directly associated with heart disease and increases in LDL
cholesterol, the kind that can clog arteries. Because of that, the institute
report said there is no safe amount of trans fat in the diet. Prompted
by those findings, and after being petitioned by health advocates, the Food and
Drug Administration decided to force food manufacturers to list trans fat among
the other fats and nutrients printed on the side of food packages. But the rule
has been challenged by food manufacturers. A final version is pending. As it stands, U.S.
consumers have no idea how much trans fat is in food because it isn't required
on nutrition labels. Even products marked "low in cholesterol" or
"low in saturated fat" might have high levels of trans fat. Providing
information about trans fat on labels could prevent 7,600 to 17,100 cases of
coronary heart disease and 2,500 to 5,600 deaths every year -- not only because
people would be able to choose healthier foods but because manufacturers could
choose to reduce trans fat amounts rather than list high levels on nutrition
panels, the FDA has estimated. The Oreo lawsuit
differs from consumer lawsuits against tobacco, and more recently, fast-food
giant McDonald's, Joseph said. "Tobacco is
well known as an unsafe product. Trans fat is not the same thing at all. Very
few people know about it," he said. Joseph said his
suit is about the hidden nature of trans fat and the marketing to children. That's what makes
it different from a class-action suit filed earlier this year against McDonald's
on behalf of an obese New York man. (That suit was thrown out in February.)
Joseph's suit does not focus on obesity or on the choices adults make when they
eat, he said. Legally, Joseph is
relying on a provision in California law that says companies aren't liable for a
commonly used but unhealthy product if it is well-known in the community that
the product is unsafe. "But this
product, trans fat, is not commonly known to be unsafe," he said.
"That's why trans fat is a far stronger case than tobacco or McDonald's
because people know those are dangerous." In
his suit, Joseph cites the Hanover, N.J., company's Nabiscoworld Web site, with
its games for children. In particular, he
mentions a school-based program called the Oreo On-line Project, which involves
stacking Oreos as high as possible without toppling the tower. In 2002, more
than 326 schools and classes around the country participated, according to the
Oreo Web site. "This is a
FUN way to teach your students math, measurement, working as a team and
more," the Web site says. Nabisco officials,
who Joseph said will likely be served with the suit this week, weren't
immediately available for comment. They will have 30 days from the May 5 filing
date to respond. State Sen. Debra
Bowen, a leader in state nutrition-reform legislation, called Joseph's choice of
the California product liability law to go after food makers who use trans fat a
unique approach. "Anything
that brings people's attention to how dangerous and unhealthy trans fat can be
is probably a good idea, because most people who go to the grocery store and see
a bag of cookies or chips pitched as 'low fat' probably assume fat is fat,"
she said. "As the FDA confirmed last year, that's definitely not the case
when it comes to trans fat." Joseph, a former
Washington, D.C., lobbyist who has been practicing law since 1980, has worked on
several other business issues, including tax credits, aviation and energy and
successfully sued ITT. He most recently formed S.F. Graffiti Busters and sued
the Department of Parking and Traffic to try to get the agency to remove
graffiti from its parking and traffic signs. In
addition to the Oreo suit, he has formed a nonprofit corporation called
BanTransFats.com, Inc. and has printed T-shirts that read, "Don't Partially
Hydrogenate Me."
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