• Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 9, 2009 10:48 AM

There has been a surge in litigation against food companies for allegedly selling unhealthy products and for misrepresenting their products' nutritional value, Nathan Koppel reports. Attorneys say they are largely on a mission about making sure people get the straight facts about what they are eating.

Without the threat of litigation, "food companies will try to sell stuff without telling people the whole truth about what they are eating," says New York plaintiffs' attorney Seth Lesser. The influence of the litigation push in prompting changes owes partly to some courts rejecting food makers' arguments that regulation should be in the exclusive hands of the federal government, Koppel writes, citing a decision by the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals regarding a 2008 New York City law requiring fast-food chains to post calorie information on their menus.

A prime force behind food litigation has been the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C., group which formed a litigation arm headed by Stephen Gardner. Without advocates, Gardner says, food companies would "refuse to give people the information they need to make smart choices."

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