212
McDonald’s and Wendy’s win false advertising lawsuit
(www.cnn.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
212 points (95.7% liked)
News
36569 readers
588 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The advertising angle is likely what sank their case. Proving the food does not meet a technical specification, like not having a quarter pound of beef in a fully cooked patty, is easier to prove. But advertising has always been hyperbole.
A very important aspect that I think people overlook is that they use similar/same marketing photos of the food on their menu. That's not advertising, maybe that's what they will argue. If I look at a menu and they have a picture of the food, I'm going to expect I get what I see (within a margin) vs when I see an advertisement I expect it to be a bit hyperbolic.
You could argue that menus are just in-store advertising
A lot of things in stores have to add disclaimers about what is on the cover of the box vs what's on the inside. I don't see how fast food gets a pass on that. Or why people are just okay with it too.
Hey I'm not defending them, just trying to imagine what justification they'd use.
Yeah, that might be a good case. Isn't the weight advertised when it's frozen/before it's cooked? How can they call it a quarter pounder if half of it's weight is reduced before it's served to you?
Because that's how food works. You buy a 1lb steak at the butcher and you see him put it on the scale. You don't weight it when it comes off the grill. You might have added butter to it, and lost some weight to dripping and evaporation. It's sort of disengenuous, if you have ever cooked, to not understand that they don't weight cooked patties and throw out the ones that lost too much weight or whatever.
Also they put a * next to the 1/4 pound that explicitly states that it is the patty prior to cooking because this has already been argued in court
The asterisk as I've seen is only on advertisements and it's really only there to shift responsibility away from the retailer towards the consumer. You won't see that kind of disclosure when you're there, looking at the menu. I don't understand the point you're making though, how is it the consumers responsibility to know that when the consumer can't verify? I can't very well inspect the meat and see if you're calling an iced over pound of meat "1lb" or if it's thawed, can I? That's how responsibility is supposed to work. If there isn't any proof offered, how can the consumer be responsible?
It's not a surprising result, but advertising now is entirely devolved into straight up lies. Have you seen the techniques they use during advertisements to make food look more appealing? They're advertising something which is entirely different from the delivered product. Under any kind of logical thinking, that's immoral and should be illegal. The fact that the current justice system serves corporations more than people doesn't justify it.
That example doesn't really translate. The butcher doesn't cook the meat for you, you take home one pound. If you're selling cooked meat products, you should have to provide an estimate for the weight of the finished product. One pound of frozen meat is going to weigh a lot less than one pound of thawed meat after it's cooked
But there's no way to do that. Should they weigh every patty to be 0.255 lb??
There's no way to do that? McDonald's cooks the same burger probably millions of times a day, the patties are cooked for a set amount of time at a certain temperature,they have the process down to a science, and you say there's no way to do that?
They're not incentivised to do that maybe. But not "there's no way to do that." You can certainly calculate to a small margin how much weight the patty should lose after cooked.