The attorney looking to organize an attack against the food industry is an unlikely crusader. McDonald has represented both the tobacco industry when the feds went after it for racketeering and fraud and the food industry as senior counsel at Kraft Foods. He is quick to note he does not think food executives are “evil” or that the industry is full of “horrible people,” but he believes some of their practices have had consequences.

“It’s not a matter of casting the food industry as villains,” McDonald said. “There’s a cost of what they’re doing that they’re not internalizing, and the taxpayers are paying for it. The states don’t have many choices.”

McDonald’s law firm has allied with a number of well-known obesity and diabetes researchers, including Barry Popkin at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Robert Lustig at the University of California San Francisco and economist Frank Chaloupka at the University of Illinois at Chicago, to help hash out the strategy.

Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist, is known for his lecture “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which went viral, attracting more than 4 million views. He believes litigation should zero in on diabetes. “It’s the diseases related to obesity that are expensive,” he said.