Day 034 - 11 Oct 94 - Page 43
1 scientists or interested members of the public to look up
2 the nutrient content of various foods, including fast
3 foods by brand name.
4
5 Q. So we have a small extract here. I mean, there are
6 hundreds and hundreds of pages of these documents?
7 A. It is quite a lengthy document, yes.
8
9 Q. They do all their own research, do they, and analysis?
10 A. They draw on many different sources.
11
12 Q. You do not happen to know in their analysis of McDonald's
13 food offhand whether that was drawn from the company's ---
14 A. I do not know.
15
16 Q. -- own research?
17 A. I do not know, but I suspect it probably was reported
18 from the company.
19
20 Q. The next document: "Breast Cancer Risk" -- do you want to
21 refer to that? It is No. 9?
22 A. I have made reference to this already.
23
24 Q. Just explain what it is then.
25 A. ORC is the Opinion Research Corporation which is
26 located in Princetown, New Jersey. They conduct polls and
27 by telephone random samples of Americans to determine
28 knowledge or opinions. We contracted with them to do a
29 study in an unbiased way on what a group of American women
30 knew regarding links between diet and breast cancer, in
31 particular. When asked an open ended question as to what
32 can a woman do to reduce her risk of breast cancer, we
33 were disturbed to find that only 20 per cent of women
34 spontaneously would give any sort of response that related
35 to lowering the fat content of the diet.
36
37 Q. This research was actually done after the US Surgeon
38 General's Report was published?
39 A. That is correct. This was done in the fall of 1991.
40
41 Q. It was published or was it done literally just before it
42 was published?
43 A. These -- yes.
44
45 Q. Yes. You are right, September 1991. It was completed at
46 that time?
47 A. That is correct. We also then asked a follow up
48 question prompting the women who were telephoned in a
49 randomly generated list: Were they aware that reducing
50 the fat in the diet might reduce the risk of breast
51 cancer? And, even with that degree of prompting, simply
52 asking them to say "yes" or "no", still only about half
53 were able to respond positively to that statement.
54
55 The implication of this to us at that time is that the
56 medical profession and others responsible for providing
57 nutrient information -- in that group I might include the
58 food industry -- has not done an adequate job of providing
59 information to American women, at least, that would allow
60 them to make informed choices that might affect their risk
