Day 298 - 11 Nov 96 - Page 16


     
     1        know, once you get into a habit of eating those kinds of
     2        foods it is very hard to change and to eat healthy foods
     3        and that is just a fact of life.  McDonald's know that and
     4        that is why they have such high levels of fat, salt and
     5        sugar in their food.
     6
     7        Therefore, by default, they are making less attractive the
     8        kind of basic foods that people should be encouraged to
     9        eat; salads, vegetables, fruit, whatever.  It is very hard
    10        for parents to try to get kids to eat healthy food, I am
    11        sure every parent will agree, when faced with this kind of
    12        barrage of unhealthy food being promoted to their
    13        children.
    14
    15        One last point on the compounding factor is that McDonald's
    16        are actively selling up their food, as we have heard, in
    17        the restaurants, in the stores, where they are encouraging
    18        people to have more chips, larger portions of chips or
    19        whatever, larger meals, additional things from McDonald's
    20        than they might naturally want when they go in.
    21
    22   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Let us take the five minute break there,
    23        anyway.
    24
    25   MS. STEEL:   Would it be possible to have 10 minutes, please?
    26
    27   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Yes.
    28
    29                         (Short Adjournment)
    30
    31   MR. MORRIS:   Just to say that although we are going to come on
    32        to Mr. Fairgrieve fairly soon, that Professor Wheelock did
    33        say, on day 15, page 20, line 29, that the proportion of
    34        McDonald's customers who eat more than once a week is very,
    35        very small.  So he is obviously unaware, despite being the
    36        nutritional consultant, to be charitable to him, he must be
    37        unaware of the fact that, as we have heard, 2 to 4 percent
    38        of their UK customer base eat several times per week, which
    39        is something like half to a million people in the UK, and
    40        that in the US 23 percent of visits, as I was correctly
    41        reminded by Mr. Rampton, are from people who eat four plus
    42        times per week.  23 percent of their visits would be 23
    43        percent of 20 million, which would be 4.6 million people
    44        every day, and in the US are eating at McDonald's four plus
    45        times per week.
    46
    47        That figure actually kind of tallies with the UK figure.
    48        Obviously we would expect something like 10 times what it
    49        would be here in the UK, because of the number of meals
    50        sold.  And he was saying eat more than once a week.  We are
    51        talking about people eating several times a week, three
    52        times or more than that.  So he has either been misinformed
    53        by McDonald's or he is misleading the court.
    54
    55        Can I just say a couple of things about my chart, my
    56        calculations.  Obviously it is a general picture.  There
    57        may be fluctuations.  Some people may only eat that kind of
    58        food at McDonald's for a couple of months at that kind of
    59        regularity, but consequently some people may be -- if that
    60        is the general picture, the fact that some people are

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