{"id":2106,"date":"2002-06-19T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-06-19T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/06\/19\/2002-06-19-us-companies-worry-they-may-take-blame-for-obesity\/"},"modified":"2002-06-19T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-06-19T12:00:00","slug":"2002-06-19-us-companies-worry-they-may-take-blame-for-obesity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/06\/19\/2002-06-19-us-companies-worry-they-may-take-blame-for-obesity\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Companies Worry They May Take Blame For Obesity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/news\/archive\/2002\/06\/13\/financial0905EDT0045.DTL\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>USA, June 13, 2002: Fearing they may be held responsible for the nation&#8217;s expanding waistline, U.S. food and beverage makers are going on the defensive with obesity. Some packaged-food companies are contemplating advertisements that would discourage consumers from overeating their products. A handful are giving exercise equipment to schools and expanding the health-and-wellness information on their Web sites. Others are mulling legal issues in case they are accused in lawsuits of promoting a growing national health crisis. In December, a surgeon General&#8217;s report warned that obesity rates in the U.S. had reached epidemic levels and called for a &#8220;national plan of action.&#8221; Last month, the Grocery Manufacturers of America, the powerful food-trade group, urged a congressional panel not to blame individual foods as the cause of America&#8217;s weight gain. Recently a handful of lawsuits have accused food companies of deceptive marketing. Sued for billing its french fries as vegetarian, even though they are made with a beef flavoring, McDonald&#8217;s Corp., said it would donate $10 million to Hindu groups and others in the U.S. as a partial settlement. A similar complaint was filed against Pizza Hut, alleging that the company concealed the use of beef products in its &#8220;vegetarian&#8221; pizzas. While the current litigation mainly targets companies for allegedly misleading claims, not for selling fattening foods, some legal experts see the cases as a portent for future obesity suits.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE USA, June 13, 2002: Fearing they may be held responsible for the nation&#8217;s expanding waistline, U.S. food,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}