Day 266 - 20 Jun 96 - Page 44
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2 MR. RAMPTON: Could I ask you, Mrs. Brophy, to please replace
3 that fat orange file.
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5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, that has been taken away.
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7 MR. RAMPTON: That has gone, has it? The one you want now is
8 your own written statement, the typed one that you made for
9 this case.
10 A. I am with you.
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12 Q. You are. On page 1 you have given an analysis of two
13 McDonald's meals which you found in some of their
14 literature, I think dating from 1985. I am not quarreling
15 with your calculations at all. Do you agree, and I assume
16 from what you have told us already that you do, that the
17 importance of any particular meal, unless it be toxic, is
18 the place that it has in a person's overall diet?
19 A. To a certain extent, but when you are enabling people
20 to make changes in their diet, then the changes have to be
21 fairly complete. So, in other words, it is a change in
22 style of eating as opposed to changing a particular meal.
23
24 Q. I understand the problem you face as a dietary advisor, if
25 I can call you that. I understand that entirely, and I do
26 not quarrel with it at all. But as a matter of scientific
27 fact, the particular composition of an individual meal is
28 only important when one has regard to the overall diet of
29 the consumer. Do you agree with that?
30 A. Yes, but I was just trying to go back to the original
31 report. I mean, in terms of McDonald's meals, children are
32 very big consumers of McDonald's meals and I find that very
33 worrying, because if you look at the calorie requirements
34 of children, then it is very hard to see where they are
35 going to fit in all the good bits of their diet when most
36 of their day's intake, if you like, their calorie intake,
37 you know, has been taken over by a McDonald's type meal.
38
39 Q. I do not suppose you are familiar, are you -- you may be, I
40 do not know -- with what I might call the frequency figures
41 for McDonald's customers? You say "children are big
42 consumers of McDonald's meals", but I do not suppose --
43 correct me if I am wrong -- you know, actually, how many
44 meals per week or per month or per six months are consumed
45 -- McDonald's meals, I mean -- by different age groups
46 within the population?
47 A. I would guess you could probably come up with
48 calculations where you put, say, one McDonald's meal in per
49 week and, you know, the rest of the diet is healthy. I
50 could imagine you could come up with something that met the
51 government's dietary reference values.
52
53 However, I would say that is a very unrealistic way of
54 working because you are looking at a style of eating. If
55 you eat, you know, a Big Mac and French Fries and apple
56 pies your taste buds are accustomed to high salt, high fat,
57 sweets and sort of a fatty type meal. When you are
58 persuading people to adopt a health promoting type diet,
59 then it is looking at changing their taste buds, if you
60 like, to go for foods that do not have that problem.
