Day 052 - 21 Nov 94 - Page 16
1 any special intelligence to start asking questions about
2 McDonald's and to realise that something is seriously
3 wrong. The more you find out about McDonald's processed
4 food, the less attractive it becomes, as this leaflet will
5 show. The truth about hamburgers is enough to put you off
6 them for life".
7
8 My Lord, on the next page, purportedly answering some of
9 the questions raised by that introductory passage, giving
10 the interested reader the answers about what lies behind
11 McDonald's mask, the passage starting: "What's so
12 unhealthy about McDonald's food?" What may be easiest to
13 do, if I may, is to hand up to your Lordship another of my
14 rather feeble desk top publishing efforts. Can I hold it
15 up? I am afraid it is all written over. I am sorry about
16 that. It actually looked like that. One started it here
17 and it opened up so that one could see the two-creature
18 hamburger at the bottom of the page in a cartoon.
19
20 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
21
22 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, on the one side there is the cow --
23 I suppose it is a cow -- saying: "If the slaughterhouse
24 doesn't get you", on the other side there is what I take to
25 be a human being, a McDonald's customer, saying: "The junk
26 food will!" Again, I emphasise the word "will" as well of
27 course as the words "the junk food".
28
29 My Lord, then the actual text from which the Defendants
30 persist in trying to extract but a single paragraph:
31 "What's so unhealthy about McDonald's food?" My Lord, one
32 notices at once that there is no reference there to a diet
33 composed entirely of food such as McDonald's or an
34 unbalanced diet too high in fat, or anything of that kind.
35 The blunt question (which is shortly to be answered under
36 the heading McDeadly, McDisease and McCancer) is: What's
37 so unhealthy about McDonald's food? "McDonald's try to
38 show in their 'Nutrition Guide' (which is full of
39 impressive-looking but really quite irrelevant facts and
40 figures) that mass-produced hamburgers, chips, colas,
41 milkshakes, etc., are a useful and nutritious part of any
42 diet.
43
44 What they don't make clear is that a diet high in fat,
45 sugar, animal products and salt (sodium), and low in fibre,
46 vitamins and minerals - which describes an average
47 McDonald's meal - is linked with cancers of the breast, and
48 bowel, and heart disease. This is accepted medical fact,
49 not a cranky theory. Every year in Britain, heart disease
50 alone causes about 180,000 deaths.
51
52 Fast = junk", my Lord, I will not read the next paragraph,
53 but there is the "junk" reference which one sees repeated
54 in the cartoon, where it is asserted that McDonald's junk
55 food, in our submission, McDonald's junk food, "will kill
56 you if the slaughterhouse doesn't".
57
58 "Paying for the habit. Chewing is essential for good
59 health, as it promotes the flow of digestive juices which
60 break down the food and send nutrients into the blood.
