Businessman jailed for selling 'low fat' doughtnuts

[WickedSmurf]

This is kinda fun...
Those poor fat people... They were being screwed all along!
But jail...? Seems a bit harsh.

Anyway, like Mr Heflich says, low-fat donuts? Who could actually believe that?

A 68-year-old US health food executive is set to begin a 15 month sentence for labelling a 530-calorie doughnut as low-fat.

The label on Robert Ligon's company's "carob-coated" doughnut said it had three grams of fat and 135 calories.

But an analysis by the US Food and Drug Administration showed the doughnut, glazed with chocolate, contained 18 grams of fat and 530 calories.

Investigators discovered Ligon bought full-fat doughnuts from Cloverhill Bakery, a Chicago company, and repackaged them as diet doughnuts.

Ligon's three-year-long nationwide doughnut fraud - which involved selling mislabelled doughnuts, cinnamon rolls and cookies to diet centres - crumbled when customers complained about gaining weight.

"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," says Jim Dahl, assistant director of the Office of Criminal Investigation for the FDA.

The low-fat doughnut, declares Len Heflich, an industry executive at the American Bakers Association, is "not possible," reports the Wall Street Journal.


Story filed: 13:38 Tuesday 6th January 2004

You were selling WHAT?

 

[Aphex_Twin]

Hey, there are some women I know who would torture the man medieval style

 

[Brewster]

This is a blatant case of false advertising. He should spend time behind bars for his heinous crime of peddling fatty doughnuts to the overweight folks of america. By targeting the diet centers with his product, he mislead many consumers who relied on his product to live up to its claim of low fat. The crime here was not the fact that they were labeled 'low fat', but rather that he claimed the doughnuts in question had just 3 grams of fat and 135 calories.

 

[carlosMM]

what do you do if someone like that sells nut-free doughnuts to allergics - but they contain a few percent of hazelnut oil? and someone dies from allergic shock?



[phaser]

 

[allhailIndia]

Only in America

given that nearly 45% of America's teens are either overweight or obese and an even larger number of adults facing the same problems, this guy is probably the American equivalent of a fake drug manufacturer

 

[SanPellegrino]

does anyone remember the Seinfeld episode "the non-fat yoghurt"? - exactly the same!

 

[cgannon64]

"What? We can have our cake and EAT IT TOO???"

 

[stratego]

Jail??? That's unfair.
Maybe the donuts would be 3 grams of fat and 150 calories, provided that you remove the glaze and half the the donut itself.

KFC has been making comercials on how fried chicken can be part of a low-fat diet. It's only 3 grams of fat provided you take off the skin of the chicken.
I don't see the KFC people going to jail, because since I start eating KFC I've gone up to 180lb. (5'7")

 

[EdwardTking]

Over here in Britain supermarkets advertised:


Crisps (USA = chips) and Chips (USA = french/freedom fries)
as sugar free

- hence implying healthy -

but not true as loaded with fat.

Sugar rich cereals and jams as fat free

- hence implying healthy -

but not true as loaded with sugar.

I bought some so called supermarket sugar free jam;
it tasted good; but was loaded with sugar;
but because they were non sucrose sugars,
they claimed it was sugar free.

 

[Patroklos]

In that cse they are bieng honest and you are putting words in there mouth. Many people do not just avoid high fat items, but rather items with certain types of fat.

I do believe some people are more prone to pack on a few extra pounds, but no one is pre disposed to be obese by a frew hundred. The lions ended that genetic line. But here is a solution to every fat persons problem....STOP EATING!!!! PUT THE DONUT DOWN, AND BACK AWAY FROM THE BOX!!!

 

[Speedo]

KFC has been making comercials on how fried chicken can be part of a low-fat diet. It's only 3 grams of fat provided you take off the skin of the chicken.

Unfortunately it's legal to the truth as far as you can (as ETking pointed out), so if it really has just 3 grams of fat sans skin they're good to go. It's misleading, but not false advertising.

The doughnut guy's ploy was flat out lying.

 

[Dark Ascendant]

I'm overweight, yet I can't get angry at this guy. Fat people should know better than to eat doughnuts if they're serious about going on a diet. As for KFC, the skin is the best part.

 

[gozpel]

It wasn't so much the false advertising that upset people, more like shattering fat ppl's dreams. To go on a doughnut diet, how silly

 

[SeleucusNicator]

A doughnut diet is completely feasible. All you'd have to do is eat three doughuts a day -- and absolutely nothing else.

 

[Raijer]

Originally posted by Seleucus Nicator
A doughnut diet is completely feasible. All you'd have to do is eat three doughuts a day -- and absolutely nothing else.

until you died of malnutrition.

There's a place in Portland, OR. called Voodoo Doughnuts that has doughnuts shaped like voodoo dolls and are flavored with things like Tang. They used to sell doughnuts glazed with Robitussin, Ny-Quil and Pepto-Bismol until the FDA put the ka-bosh on that. Their best selling doughnut is one filled with 100mg of caffine, for those poor slobs who don't have enough time to sip a cup o' joe with their doughnuts.

 

[stratego]

until you died of malnutrition

Well, what's more important, looking slim or being alive? I think some dieter have made their choice.

In either the 20's or 30's scientists came up with a very effective diet pill, tape worm eggs. The tape worm will grow inside you for about a week or more (depending on how much you want to lose), draining all your nutrients. After that period of time you'll go back to the doctor and he'll give you a pill to kill the tape worms, then you're done. [dance] People know the risk involved, but they still do it.

 

[thestonesfan]

Originally posted by Raijer

until you died of malnutrition.

Who says doughnuts can't be made out of hamburger or potatoes?

 

[WickedSmurf]

Originally posted by thestonesfan


Who says doughnuts can't be made out of hamburger or potatoes?

Exactly. I have been informed that some people even put hamburgers on their pizzas... Nothing is impossible in todays errr kitchen (kinda).

 

[Raijer]

Originally posted by thestonesfan
Who says doughnuts can't be made out of hamburger or potatoes?

You may have a point. I suppose you could take that one step farther, and make a highly nutritious super-vegan-hi-fiber-low-carb-fortified-with-brewer's-yeast-and-echinacea doughnut.