Day 298 - 11 Nov 96 - Page 13


     
     1        So anyway, going back to the point, if - and these are
     2        rough calculations, guidelines - if an average McDonald's
     3        meal, which is what we are talking about in the fact sheet,
     4        is something like 40 percent of calories from fat, and some
     5        may be higher, some may be lower, if a safe level of fat in
     6        the diet is less than 20 percent, which is going on the --
     7        we are talking about the health here, we are not talking
     8        about realism, we are talking about what is healthy for
     9        somebody and the World Health Organisation would like a
    10        maximum to be something down that range, 15 percent, maybe
    11         -- and this is the maximum, so say less than 20 percent in
    12        the diet, which also goes along with Professor Campbell's
    13        view and Dr. Barnard's view and virtually everyone else who
    14        has been asked about it -- say the average person eats 21
    15        meals a week, which again could be less, could be more,
    16        then if -- now, the next but one line, if an average meal
    17        is a thousand kilocalories, the exact figure irrelevant,
    18        the point being that it does not matter for these
    19        calculations what the number of calories is, because we are
    20        just trying to say that it is the percentages that count,
    21        so we are just assuming an average meal is a thousand
    22        kilocalories and people on average would eat 21,000
    23        kilocalories in a week from 21 meals.
    24
    25        The point being the fat should be less than 20 percent,
    26        i.e., it should be less than 4,200 kilocalories.  That
    27        should be the fat consumption for health concerns.  If one
    28        eats three McDonald's meals of approximately 40 percent
    29        calories from fat in a week, they are getting 1,200
    30        calories from fat, which only leaves less than 3,000
    31        calories from fat for the rest of the 18 meals in the week,
    32        to stick within the maximum guideline for concern about
    33        health risks.  So 3,000 over 18 is basically calories from
    34        fat, less than, per meal, which is less than 16.6 percent
    35        average of calories from fat for each meal for the rest of
    36        the week.
    37
    38        If we go to somebody who is eating six times a week at
    39        McDonald's, the calculations come out that you would have
    40        to have less than 12 percent for the other 15 meals in the
    41        week, calories from fat.  That is the calculations.  Now,
    42        obviously these are rough calculations, but they show for a
    43        start....
    44
    45        Well, first of all, the government does not consider it
    46        realistic that people can get their fat consumption in a
    47        country like England or even the USA below 30 to 35
    48        percent, because of the dietary habits; therefore, that is
    49        why they have made such conservative recommendations.  But
    50        to expect somebody who is eating at McDonald's three or six
    51        times a week to have an average for the rest of their meals
    52        12 percent or 16 percent less than those for the rest, is
    53        completely impossible, and therefore people eating that
    54        amount of times at McDonald's per week are putting
    55        themselves at additional risk from whatever else they are
    56        eating in their diet, an unrecoverable risk, purely from
    57        their consumption of McDonald's food.
    58
    59        Now, there are all sorts of things to be taken into
    60        consideration.  First of all, this does not include the

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