Maybe the correct heading should be “Is food the new asbestos?” But since Mickey D has been shoved into the legal profession’s firing range where they can be legally attacked with high-powered assault rifles again, let’s stick with the manifest evils of the good old Number 3 with a diet Coke® for now.

Here is the analogy. Years ago, when I was just a wide-eyed elementary school boy, my fifth grade teacher showed us a film strip that had to be threaded into a complex, multi-sprocketed projector. As the resident “techie” before the word was even coined, it was my job to get the thing running.

The film, produced by the National Association of Manufacturers if memory serves, was all about the wonders of asbestos. A fire proof product that was extremely resistant to heat and in abundant supply, the stuff was used as insulation in homes and buildings, for brake pads on cars and a long list of other beneficial things. Its good properties probably saved millions of people from serious injury or death during the primitive times we endured during most of the twentieth century.

With the twin advantages of perfect hindsight and lawyers looking for a big payday, asbestos became an evil, spawn-of-the-devil product in the last quarter of the twentieth century, foisted off on an unsuspecting and innocent public by greedy industrialists who should have known that asbestos was a carcinogen.

Never mind that it took decades of exposure for its carcinogenic properties to become apparent. Greedy lawyers, seeking to move up in life from the very bottom of the spit bucket, began attacking greedy industrialists, hoping to at least swap positions with them. . .as if moving from dead-last to second-to-dead-last was an monumental improvement.

The law firm of Grabum, Shakem and Fleesim quickly succeeded in converting a multi-billion dollar industry into a multi-billion dollar drain on the economy. Their highly successful efforts at turning a positive into a negative might make a great Harvard Business Review case study.

At the beginning of the new millennium, their target is food. McDonald’s gets to step into the stoning pit first, of course, because they’re the big dogs. They’ll be attacked with the old “quarter pounders made me fat and ruined my life” argument. The counter-argument, “You made your choice freely, ate quarter pounders as a main diet and sat around on your big sesame seeded buns all day” might just lose its credence.

It goes against a basic legal creed. If each of us is really responsible for the consequences of our own actions, how can there be big legal settlements?

Following McDonalds into the stoning pit will be fat replacements, artificial sweeteners and everything that’s fried (KFC now stands for Kitchen Fresh Chicken, the embarrassed Colonel is revolving in his grave). Like asbestos, the first two products were developed by concerned industrialists who sought to serve a marketplace need, this time it was the “health market” of the 50’s and 60’s. Only now, half a century later, are we all finding out that the alternatives might not be as healthy as we thought. Here comes a wild-eyed posse of legal types shaking down those now greedy industrialists who developed margarine and aspartame and shamelessly benefited by earning untold billions!

I say if someone knowingly introduces a product that’s detrimental to the public health and well-being, he should be flogged and tossed into the darkest, coldest room in prison. On the other hand, if someone introduces a product that is considered by existing science as a good thing but 50 years later the science changes, he should be given a Get out of Jail Free card.

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Chuck Jolley is a marketing executive who's been associated with the food industry for over 25 years. He's helped develop advertising and public relations programs for Cryovac, the world's largest flexible packaging company, and published MEAT&POULTRY, the leading trade magazine in the meat and poultry industry. He's worked with major companies in the meat, poultry, seafood, baking, dairy and fresh produce industries.Contact: crjolley@msn.com