I am trying to lose a few extra pounds and have been reasonably good as of late.  The other day, however, some Brach’s chocolate eggs began calling out to me: “Eat me, eat me.”  I was powerless to resist, so strong is my addiction.  In just an hour, I had devoured a pound of them.  I’ve decided to stand up for all Americans and sue Brach’s.

After all, I’ve spent the last decade or so more than 50 pounds overweight.  Only with great effort did I take off most of the excess last year.  But the calorie pushers are making it hard for me to keep it off.

There are, of course, many evil fat dealers.  So I was pleased to read about a  legal summit in June at Northeastern University, at which a coterie of activist lawyers who torture the law for a living plotted a strategy for “attacking obesity.”

Luckily, they are not going to push the tiresome mantra “eat less, exercise more.”  That’s almost impossible to do when you are surrounded by fat sellers, attempting to hook you on their dangerous products.

New strategies are desperately needed.  Over the years, George Washington University’s John Banzhaf has led the way in suing everyone for everything.  He recently targeted McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants, seemingly a good strategy since they obviously are responsible for people being fat.  Alas, in January, federal judge Robert Sweet dismissed a class-action suit against McDonald’s with this astonishing observation: The complaint failed “to allege the McDonald’s products consumed by the plaintiffs were dangerous in any way other than that which was open and obvious to a reasonable consumer.”

Consumers are responsible?  What an outdated concept!  Apparently, however,  we need to find more targets than just the burger pushers.  Indeed, I was already looking elsewhere: I only frequented a McDonald’s or other purveyor of french (or is that freedom?) fries once every couple weeks.  Even Banzhaf & Co. might have trouble proving them responsible for my fat, though he claims even two such meals a week is enough to cause obesity.  If you’re a lawyer, you will obviously believe anything.  Apparently, jurors will, too: Banzhaf triumphantly points to a survey showing that one quarter of jurors would vote to hold fast-food restaurants responsible for obesity.

Which is all to the good, in my view.  Admittedly, it’s hard for me to blame such enterprises for all of my extra fat.  Not that I’m not willing to try—it obviously isn’t my fault, and it’s time they paid for their greedy attempts to addict me, even if they failed to do so.  Sweet’s ruling, however, demonstrates that it is important to look a little further afield for villains—only as a matter of justice, of course.  And, just incidentally, to find some additional deep pockets to provide appropriate recompense.

Let’s start with the supermarkets.  When Caesar Barber filed the first lawsuit against fast-food companies, he acknowledged that he only ate an average of five meals per week at the burger dealers.  That left another 16 meals at home, and I suspect that he wasn’t downing salads and tofu.

So why don’t grocery stores tell us that apples are better for us than vanilla wafers?  That we should eat more fish instead of potato chips?  It certainly isn’t my fault that I more often carried mint-chocolate-chip ice cream home with me than I did melons.  We—I, poor Caesar, and everyone else forced to consume all of those extra calories—were victims of the lack of honest advertising by Giant Food, Food Lion, Albertson’s, D’Agostino’s, Ralph’s, Associated, Safeway, and other supermarkets.  Sue them all!

That’s not enough, however.  Burger King might be at fault for selling food dripping in fat, but what about the farmers who raised the cattle and grew the potatoes?  They know that innocent Americans will suffer as they grow addicted.  We go after poppy and coca growers.  Why not hit the dairy farmers who make milkshakes possible?

Moreover, I am planning lawsuits against the chocolate manufacturers.  M&M’s have long posed an overwhelming temptation to me—Mars should be made to pay.  Then there’s Nestle, Hershey, and Ghira-delli.  And I certainly won’t stop at America’s borders.  When I have traveled overseas, the evil chocolate pushers have trailed me, forcing me to eat prodigious amounts of Toblerone and Cadbury products.

Of course, I don’t begrudge them the right to produce their wares.  I just want better advertising.  The wrappers should inform us that we might gain weight if we eat them: “Warning:?All dieticians know that consuming a pound of M&M’s daily creates a significant risk of gaining weight.”  Had Mars been responsible enough to put such a warning on its labels, I never would have gained a pound.

Another thing is the taste.  The problem with chocolate is that it tastes, well, like chocolate.  Why don’t they make it taste like celery?  Obviously, the chocolate dealers want to hook us.  They should pay for playing off of human weakness.  I’m going to ask for punitive damages to punish them for their greed.

There is yet another set of responsible parties, however—the celery growers.  What sane human being likes the taste of celery?  If farmers made celery—and tomatoes, lettuce, peas, corn, and all of the other allegedly “good” foods—taste like chocolate, then I’d eat a pound of it every day.  If they did their job and made their products taste good, no one would be sitting on his couch, eating bon-bons while watching TV.

Which brings up television.  The networks and cable systems also work to turn us into addicts.  And sitting around is obviously a major cause of obesity.  So why shouldn’t the media pay, as well as the makers of comfortable couches, which encourage people to sit inside rather than go jogging outside? 

The field is wide open for creative tort attorneys.  It should be obvious that nothing is anyone’s fault, which means everything is someone else’s fault.  Let’s start lining up the defendants.