Hey, We Only Said It Was Part of This Nutritious Breakfast

Jacob Sullum | January 18, 2006

The Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Coalition for a Commercial-Free Childhood plan to sue Kellogg and Viacom for violating a Massachusetts consumer protection law by marketing food products of low nutritional value to children. "Nickelodeon and Kellogg engage in business practices that literally sicken our children," says CSPI Executive Director Michael Jacobson. "It's a multimedia brainwashing and re-education campaign—and a disease-promoting one at that."

Under a Massachusetts law barring unfair or deceptive advetrising, each exposure to an actionable ad counts as a violation. At $25 a pop, the damages could run into the billions. But CSPI says it would be happy if Kellogg would simply agree to overhaul its products and its marketing strategy.

These days, it seems, reality is about a week behind satire.

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|1.18.06 @ 2:35PM|#

"Nickelodeon and Kellogg engage in business practices that literally sicken our children,"

Literally? What, they're selling cereal infected with e.coli?

People like this make my head literally explode.

|1.18.06 @ 2:39PM|#

My only hope is that Milton from Office Space is working in an ever-shrinking cubicle somwhere at CSPI, and that he really will make good on his threat.

The CSPI ought to be put out of comission as a public danger because every time I read something from them, my blood pressure skyrockets to dangerous levels.

|1.18.06 @ 2:47PM|#

Jennifer:

Me too. Isn't that ironic?

Jeff P.|1.18.06 @ 2:51PM|#

Slightly off-topic: Has the left ever protested Schoolhouse Rock? It promoted a fact-based recitation of grammer and math, and acted as propaganda for a society-of-laws and western culture in general. As these elements have been effctively excised from public ed, I can't see them tolerating such wholesale brainwashing. Hell, "Elbow Room" probably counts as hate speech in certain school districts.

theOneState|1.18.06 @ 2:53PM|#

These days, it seems, reality is about a week behind satire.

Hey, it's catching up!

|1.18.06 @ 2:54PM|#

Jeff, why are you posting here, you better go get yourself some Mop 'n' Glo, rubber gloves and a big box of SOS pads.

Looks like you've got some serious cleaning to do.

alkali|1.18.06 @ 2:57PM|#

Under a Massachusetts law barring unfair or deceptive advetrising, each exposure to an actionable ad counts as a violation. At $25 a pop, the damages could run into the billions.

The Mass. Supreme Judicial Court's decision yesterday in the Hershenow case may throw that theory for a loop:

"The plaintiffs apparently assume that the availability of statutory damages in the amount of twenty-five dollars, see G. L. c. 93A, § 9(3), in lieu of actual damages, eliminates the need to prove a loss resulting from a defendant's deceptive conduct. The statutory damage provision does not supplant the requirement to prove causation under § 9. It merely eliminates the need to quantify an amount of actual damages if the plaintiff can establish a cognizable loss caused by a deceptive act. ...

"Every consumer is, of course, entitled to the full protection of law. If any person invades a consumer's legally protected interests, and if that invasion causes the consumer a loss -- whether that loss be economic or noneconomic -- the consumer is entitled to redress under our consumer protection statute. A consumer is not, however, entitled to redress under G. L. c. 93A, where no loss has occurred. To permit otherwise is irreconcilable with the express language of G. L. c. 93A, ? 9, and our earlier case law."

|1.18.06 @ 3:00PM|#

More so than the maladroit use of the word literal, I think the most offensive semantic device these cock-knockers use is the "our children" trope.

If Michael Jacobson has children they are HIS children. The children who live at my house are MY children. His casual inference of common guardianship is repugnant. What on earth could lead him to believe that I would let him have any say whatsoever in my decisions as a parent?

|1.18.06 @ 3:07PM|#

Because he knows better than you.

|1.18.06 @ 3:15PM|#

Because he knows better than you.

Careful, Jacobson might be a scanner. How else would Jenn's head have exploded?

|1.18.06 @ 3:19PM|#

A quick review of the "Center for Science in the Public Interest" website suggests that it in fact does no work that is actually science or in the public interest. Maybe someone could organize a suit against CSPI for deceptive advertising. Anyone out there that has actually given money to this joke of an organization that could serve as a plaintiff?

|1.18.06 @ 3:20PM|#

I wish I owned Kellogg's, so I could fortify my cereal with extra vitamins (thus negating the "low nutritional value" bit) and then add five times the sugar.

Fuck you, Michael Jacobsen. And learn what the hell a "disease" is before you insist that it is caused by cereal.

|1.18.06 @ 3:24PM|#

But CSPI says it would be happy if Kellogg would simply agree to overhaul its products and its marketing strategy.

More likely CSPI "would be happy" if Kellogg's settles for a few million of the billions they seek.

|1.18.06 @ 3:31PM|#

Your Honor, the Respondent is obviously unfit as a parent. See State's exhibit A: a 2800 ounce box of Frosted Flakes, with complementary rolling wheels, bought at Costco. They were feeding thier children this ...stuff. They even claim, "They're great." Oh, the humanity.

|1.18.06 @ 3:44PM|#

This one is my favorite from the CSPI website:

"At the beginning of summer, CSPI complained to the Beer Institute and Coors Brewing Company about a television ad that we believed violated the Institute�s voluntary advertising guidelines.

"The ad featured a bus boy rapidly clearing tables of bottles of Coors Light beer. Because he was not really a bar employee, but obviously an imposter interested in collecting the bottles to improve his chances of winning free music in a related Coors promotion, we alleged that the advertisement portrayed or implied illegal activity, a �no-no� in the Code.

"Coors asked CSPI to utilize the independent third-party ad review process it had arranged with the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau (BBB). After a rigorous back and forth within the BBB�s Advertising Pledge Program, the BBB ultimately upheld CSPI�s complaint and directed Coors to discontinue the ad. Coors, without conceding any wrong-doing, immediately complied on August 5."

The ad "portrayed or implied illegal activity"? Since when is it illegal to wander around a bar picking up empty bottles?

You bastard, you stole my trash!

Jeff P.|1.18.06 @ 3:54PM|#

|1.18.06 @ 4:09PM|#

Jeff- they cut the roof of his mouth.

|1.18.06 @ 4:15PM|#

Uh, who buys the cereals????
Let's blame them... the mother and the father...oompa ...oompa..oompa-dee-do.

|1.18.06 @ 4:17PM|#

As bad as they CSPI is not the most obnoxious of the food-nanny groups; that would have to be Neil Barnard's "Physician's Committe For Responsible Medicine," with their TV PSAs featuring officious assholes in lab coats bursting into a home, snatching a slice of pizza out of a kid's hand (I thought pizza was nutritious!) and stocking the fridge with veggieburgers. At the end of the spot you see these dickheads gleefully marching out of the house, pronouncing, "one down, ten million to go."
Hey, Dr, Neil: you'll get my pizza when you pry it from my cold, dead, oh nevermind...

KipEsquire|1.18.06 @ 4:42PM|#

Class actions against so-called "candy cereals" were tried and failed in California. I don't see them succeeding elsewhere.

It seems to me that including the federally-mandated nutritional label on the box is -- or should be -- a safe harbor (i.e., an absolute defense) to claims such as this.

|1.18.06 @ 4:47PM|#

Uh, who buys the cereals???? Let's blame them... the mother and the father...oompa ...oompa..oompa-dee-do.

There's the problem, Isn't it? Parents refuse to accept any blame for their kids condition. Sugary cereals and their commercials have existed as long as television. Yet it's today's indulgent parents (who are terrified of saying no to their kids) need a legal solution to the "problem". If your kid is a butterball headed for diabetes, tell him he can't have any more fruit loops.

|1.18.06 @ 5:13PM|#

I recently purchased a cereal which purported to be "magically delicious". This implies some kind of supernatural deliciousness. Upon eating it however, I found that it was only delicious in the normal manner as consistent with the laws of physics. I am filing suit for a refund and also to force the company to alter its deceptive marketing tactics. :)

|1.18.06 @ 5:21PM|#

Jennifer is small and compact. Any mess caused a cranial explosion will be limited. Given her poor diet, I expect the meat to be stringy so the spread pattern should be managable. Her blood, thin from malnutrition, will have probably evaporated by the time I get home.

And yet I am healthier, happier and more fit than those obsessive-compulsive foodies who don't dare put anything edible in their mouths without first measuring it on a food scale, checking the CSPI website to see if there's anything bad about it, calculating what percentage of their USDA recommended nutritional allowance it contains, and keeping any salt or spices the hell away from it because flavor is bad for you.

And they will all drop dead at fifty because their constant worry over their diet will give them a fatal ulcer. Meanwhile, I will be interviewed on my hundredth birthday and tell the reporters I owe my longevity to the consumption of cheese sauce, pasta, pot, fried eggs, Flintstone's vitamins and at least one serving of vegetables every month.

Jeff P.|1.18.06 @ 5:24PM|#

See what I deal with? Even an exploding head won't shut her up...

|1.18.06 @ 5:42PM|#

"Nickelodeon and Kellogg engage in business practices that literally sicken our children," says CSPI Executive Director Michael Jacobson.

Well he's a fine one to talk! After all those child molestation charges!

Oh, wait... Jacobson...never mind.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Coalition for a Commercial-Free Childhood plan to sue Kellogg and Viacom for... "a multimedia brainwashing and re-education campaign?and a disease-promoting one at that."

Taken to the extreme, CSPI's basically saying that any message anyone doesn't like is "brainwashing" and should be subject to lawsuits. Can I sue them for helping to contribute to my misanthropy?

|1.18.06 @ 5:47PM|#

That's my state, the only one in the union where the government sets car insurance rates and a voter-approved income tax rollback gets frozen by the legislature.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is neither a center for science, nor in the public interest. As Ralph Nader does not constitute "the public".

I remember convincing my dad to buy me lucky charms when I was a kid - that means that *I* was brainwashed, and I brainwashed HIM into buying them for me! Those ads are really potent stuff!

|1.18.06 @ 5:56PM|#

Jennifer--

Your diet is incomplete. You need to add ice cream, and more chocolate. I recommend Klondike bars.

|1.18.06 @ 6:26PM|#

Stealing from a comment by the erstwhile Evan Williams, I'll say this: The CSPI is a sugar-coated piece of shit.

|1.18.06 @ 6:33PM|#

I eat chocolate, Chuck. Didn't you see where I mentioned "one serving of vegetables per month?" Cacao beans count as vegetables.

|1.18.06 @ 6:40PM|#

And they will all drop dead at fifty because their constant worry over their diet will give them a fatal ulcer.

At the risk of being Hakluyt-ishly overliteral, ulcers are caused by a bacterium, not stress. It was in the news and everything. Someone won the Nobel for medicine over it.

|1.18.06 @ 6:46PM|#

Well, Phil, if they'd been smart enough to follow my diet, the bacterium would have starved to death.

|1.18.06 @ 10:27PM|#

David -
There's the problem, Isn't it? Parents refuse to accept any blame for their kids condition.

I wouldn't necessarily conflate lawyers suing for billions to parents.

Not that all parents are good or accept responsibility well, just that this lawsuit by itself, without thousands or more parents signing on, isn't that proof.

|1.19.06 @ 3:30AM|#

Yeah, but the picture has the guy eating 12 bran muffins, three glasses of milk, a pitcher of orange juice, 18 slices of bacon...

Dan T.|1.19.06 @ 9:43AM|#

Literally? What, they're selling cereal infected with e.coli?
People like this make my head literally explode.

In a true libertarian paradise, companies could legally sell foods infected with e.coli.

After all, who are these �experts� who tell us that e.coli is bad for us? They think they know better? If somebody eats e.coli infected food and dies, it was their fault because they knew the risks of eating. Without the nanny state, the Free Market would sort things about because once enough people died from one company�s infected foot they�d start to lose sales. What a miscarriage of justice that the State forces companies to sell safe food against their will!!!

|1.19.06 @ 11:43AM|#

In a true libertarian paradise, companies could legally sell foods infected with e.coli.

I might be wrong, but it is my understanding that sanitary foor laws only prohibit selling food containing e.coli through mainstream mass-produced food venues, such as supermarkets. There is a presumption among most shoppers in those venues that the food doesn't have that kind of stuff.

If I pour e.coli onto some popcorn and say to my adult friend (who knows what that pathogen is): "hey wanna buy this e.coli laden popcorn for $5?" I don't think I would be breaking the law.

I don't even think I would be liable if he buys it and eats it; except perhaps if I know that he is mentally ill or something.

That being said, yes Dan T. I know your post was just a joke.

|1.19.06 @ 2:53PM|#

Jennifer - It's amazing that most of the time when people say "literally", they mean "figuratively". I've never heard anyone say "His head figuratively exploded.".

There are a couple good takedowns of Jacobson and CSPI at Stats.org.

|1.19.06 @ 11:31PM|#

From another thread...

Passing it along

Stimulus: "rationalizes away the facts that don;t support the beleif...call to mind other essential truths born out of exaggerations like The War on Terror ...Frankenfood... Global Warming..."

Response:*cough, sigh* urhumm...The Free Market...hrumph...Natural Law...*cough* ... Government is Violence...Scientific Studies are biased by the government funding..*cough*... Libertarianism is Rational

Stimulus: vigorous assertion won;t make them truth...

Response:
Amen I AM WITH YOU on that point

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