(2005-08-28) — Just a day after the state of California filed a lawsuit aimed at requiring cancer warning labels on containers of french fries and potato chips, the state attorney general’s office announced that it would also file suit later this week in an effort to “spare our citizens from the dangers of second-hand salt.”

Scientific studies indicate that the chemical acrylamide, created in small quantities when starches are cooked at high temperatures, causes cancer in rats who eat supersized quantities of it each day for long periods of time.

New research explores the possibility that salt granules, inadvertantly dislodged from the fry and containing a trace amount of acrylamide, could wind up in the digestive tracts of unsuspecting customers who didn’t even order french fries.

“If you have some sort of death wish and choose to eat french fries, that’s your business,” said an unnamed spokesman for the attorney general’s office, “but if the salt from your fries comes in contact with non-fry-eaters, whether from residue on the condiment island or the occasional unclean table, then you’re putting the lives of others in jeopardy. That’s an assault on public health requiring government action.”

The state will ask a judge to mandate secluded areas in fastfood restaurants designated for the “social pariahs who insist on ordering french fries despite the danger.”

“We’re not trying to ban the sale or use of french fries,” the source said, “because you can’t legislate morality. However, we can try to protect the innocent from accidental ingestion of second-hand salt.”

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