Glenn Lammi, “Food Lawsuits Claiming ‘Addiction’ Coming to a Courtroom Near You?,” Legal Pulse, December 6, 2011

Glenn Lammi, chief counsel for the Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Studies Division, has published an article suggesting that if “regulation-by-litigation practitioners” can convince the public and policymakers that “certain foods or substances in foods are ‘addictive,’” lawsuits against food companies are sure to follow. Lammi discusses a November 27 “60 Minutes” report in which a professional flavoring company employee agreed with Morley Safer that the company was “trying to create an addictive taste.” The article also cites studies purportedly showing that foods high in fats and sugars are as addictive as cocaine.

According to Lammi, obstacles to such litigation remain. “Liability claims
based on consumers’ ‘addiction’ to certain foods would still face substantial
hurdles,” he writes, “such as the need to show how an allegedly addictive
substance in food caused a plaintiff to become dangerously overweight.
Causation is much different from correlation. Lawyers would have to discount
the many other factors that lead to obesity, leaving addiction as the main
culprit. They would also have to show that food companies knew or should
have known of the addictive nature of their product, or knowingly manipulated
the product to become addictive.”