Day 269 - 25 Jun 96 - Page 14


     
     1        their customers to come to their doors as many times as
     2        possible, I think it is almost certainly, and I think
     3        McDonald's would agree, a spin-off in terms of the fact
     4        that it does influence the rest of the way that they eat.
     5
     6        So again, without a really detailed research programme on
     7        this subject, it would be very difficult to quantitate.  I
     8        think we are looking at some minimal figures here.  It
     9        would be very difficult to quantitate the contribution of
    10        any of these sort of high fat, saturated fat food types,
    11        fast-foods, that might make to heart disease or western
    12        types of cancer.
    13
    14   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  I think you had got to 2.2 when I asked
    15        for an explanation.
    16
    17   MS. STEEL:  Yes.
    18        A.   Just for a point of clarification, my Lord, when I am
    19        perhaps talking loosely off the cuff like this, if one is
    20        referring to saturated fats, one actually is -- I am
    21        including conceptually the trans-isomers which are present
    22        in these types of meals as well, because the discussions
    23        that have been held so far and the biological evidence is
    24        that they are treated in much the same way as saturated
    25        fats.
    26
    27   MS. STEEL:  Right.
    28
    29   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Yes, just pause a moment.
    30
    31   MS. STEEL:  Over a period of time do most people's dietary
    32        patterns remain fairly the same or are they quite likely to
    33        change quite a lot, or is that not really something you can
    34        answer?
    35        A.   Well, I think one can answer there is no doubt that
    36        people's diets have changed.  The reasons for the change is
    37        difficult to give you.
    38
    39   Q.   Right.
    40        A.   But, I mean, even if we estimate, for example, the
    41        content of fatty acids in the milk of women, which we have
    42        done in mid-1970's, the 1980's and the 1990's, that it was
    43        fairly similar between the '70's and '80's, but of late
    44        there has been a significant change in that there has been
    45        a much -- there has been an increase in the content of
    46        unsaturated fatty acids in the milk of mothers that we
    47        study.
    48
    49        Now, this is not big enough evidence, but I think there is,
    50        without doubt, a changing pattern of diets.  There was
    51        certainly a huge change in diet after the end of the last
    52        world war.  During the war the country was guided by the
    53        Ministry of Food which made everybody dig for victory and
    54        we ate a lot of the sorts of -- in fact, a diet which was
    55        very close to what the Americans might call a prudent diet
    56        or much closer to matching the recommendations of what
    57        people are trying to get at.
    58
    59        Subsequently, after the war, the disbandment of the
    60        Ministry of Food, the Government went for a cheap food

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