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Super-sized kids - including a 400-pounder - who ate at
McDonald's nearly every day sank their teeth into the Golden
Arches in court yesterday, claiming they didn't know
cheeseburgers and fries would turn them into porky,
fat-munching junkies.
The kids' Mac attack is the first case in the United States
to be heard by a judge where customers of a hamburger chain
are suing because they say the food made them obese and
unhealthy.
Lawyer Samuel Hirsch, acting on behalf of eight New York
children and their parents, said McDonald's created a national
epidemic of fat kids and violated consumer fraud laws by
failing to adequately disclose the health effects of its menu.
"It's a very insipid, toxic kind of thing," he said.
The children include 15-year-old Bronx schoolkid Gregory
Rhymes, who stands only 5-foot-6 but says he tips the scales
at 400 pounds and has diabetes after eating McDonald's nearly
every day since he was 6.
"I normally order the Big Mac, fries, ice cream or shake -
I like to super-size my orders," the Mac-aholic said in an
affidavit.
His mom, Ruth Rhymes, claimed she wouldn't have let her son
gorge himself on McDonald's calorie-crammed food if she knew
it contain high levels of fat and salt.
"I always believed McDonald's food was healthy for my son,"
she said in papers filed in Manhattan federal court.
Two of the children, Jazlyn Bradley, 19, who weighs 270
pounds, and her 17-year-old sister, Shakima Bradley, 215
pounds, were sitting in court when McDonald's lawyer Brad
Lerman scoffed at the suit, saying, "People don't go to sleep
thin and wake up obese."
"The understanding and comprehension of what hamburgers and
french fries do has been with us for a long, long time," he
said.
Jazlyn Bradley, who's other sister Naisia, 13, is also
involved in the suit, said she often ate at McDonald's before
school and during lunch breaks.
"I would regularly order either breakfast, the No. 1 Big
Mac Meal, the No. 2 meal, chicken nuggets or the fish
sandwich," she said in her affidavit.