Day 266 - 20 Jun 96 - Page 52
1 know, a stack of fish and chips, he might do that. But it
2 is not the McDonald's meal that makes the contribution to
3 that diet, is it? You could eat that McDonald's meal three
4 times a day and still remain perfectly healthy?
5 A. It is actually very, very difficult in our culture to
6 get people to achieve the levels of fat that health
7 professionals are trying to achieve. Very, very difficult
8 indeed. It has been said, this is a quote, somebody looking
9 at the recommendations in the Diet Nutrition Prevention of
10 Chronic Diseases that the sort of animal products, like the
11 meat. They are not saying do not eat meat anything like
12 that, but if you applied the advice in here, the meat would
13 be rendered as a garish. So it would be rather like the
14 styles of eating in other countries. Say China, where meat
15 is an occasional treat you might have once a week. You
16 would have to eat that type of way to achieve the World
17 Health Organisation's recommendations which is why the
18 Government in this country came up with a more moderate 35
19 percent fat decrease which they have viewed as achievable.
20 But even that, it is incredibly difficult with the culture
21 we are in to get people to have a lower fat type of diet.
22 And you have picked a young man, you know, a young man with
23 moderate activity. If you were to take, say a woman of my
24 size, for instance. I think you would probably find that
25 you know, eating g that amount of calories and I think, you
26 know for somebody, a small female for example, it would be
27 very hard for them to, you know, eat and still be within
28 the Government's proportion of fat.
29
30 Q. Well, I chose a man Mrs. Brophy because it is our belief,
31 and we are nearly on the point of being able to say it is
32 the fact, that the people who eat McDonald's food anything
33 like frequently -- that is to say once a week or more,
34 yes? Are mostly men between the ages of 16 and 34?
35 A. If--
36
37 Q. That is why I chose him?
38 A. If we were to get a study going to look at what else
39 those men also ate, I would suggest that those men and,
40 this is in my experience of doing diet histories and
41 looking at studies of what people actually eat that their
42 fat would probably be above, if you are looking at that
43 sort of type of population, above the national average. I
44 would think it would be very, very rare to find this type
45 of individual that you are suggesting, one that would
46 consume the McDonald's meal and then go away and eat the
47 high carbohydrate, high fruit and vegetable meal. I would
48 say that would be a very, very rare sort of individual
49 indeed.
50
51 Q. I was not suggesting any such person, but that is by the
52 way. Do you know that dietary habits change as people get
53 older?
54 A. (No reply)
55
56 Q. They seem to?
57 A. Dietary habits are more fluid in younger people. As
58 they get older they tend to become more firmly entrenched
59 in terms of the types of food that people eat. It is quite
60 difficult to change the diets of older people. Younger
