Day 033 - 10 Oct 94 - Page 11
1 McDonald's advertising has been misleading regarding its
2 fat content. Do you want to emphasise that point?
3 A. Well, we have been concerned that McDonald's has been
4 less than candid -- I might say less than honest -- in
5 materials they have made available for the public. When
6 the McDonald's Corporation released the McLean Deluxe, it
7 was portrayed as a low fat burger with the implication
8 that this would be a healthy offering. They described it
9 as being 91 per cent fat free, meaning that by weight 91
10 per cent of it was not fat.
11
12 Nine per cent of it, however, was fat, and that is a
13 meaningless statistic as far as nutritionists or
14 dieticians or physicians or researchers are concerned.
15 What dieticians are interested in is what percentage of
16 the calories in that food come from fat, or, particularly,
17 from saturated fat.
18
19 Using that standard, the burger pattie that was used in a
20 McLean Deluxe was not very much different from a standard
21 hamburger pattie. In fact, 49 per cent of its calories
22 came from fat.
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is the pattie itself?
25 A. Yes.
26
27 Q. Not the complete burger?
28 A. That is correct. With the bread and the pickle and
29 the toppings, it gets down to about 29 per cent of its
30 calories come from fat. That is lower than their regular
31 burger, but it is quite different from the 9 per cent
32 figure which we believe their advertising implied. So
33 that is what I was concerned about; that if it is a 29 per
34 cent fat burger, perhaps it should be advertised as being
35 a 29 per cent fat burger.
36
37 Q. Just very briefly, you have looked into a lot of studies
38 on links between diet and heart disease; is that correct?
39 A. That is correct.
40
41 Q. Hundreds, thousands?
42 A. Certainly hundreds.
43
44 Q. You have concluded that those who avoid meat products also
45 have a reduced risk of heart disease mortality. Do you
46 want to give a brief glimpse of what your conclusions are
47 from all the studies you have looked at on this issue?
48 A. Yes. There is a great deal of consistency on the
49 issue of heart disease, that is, that the less fat, less
50 cholesterol, less saturated fat and, I might say as well,
51 less meat and less dairy products one consumes, the lower
52 one's risk of heart disease is likely to be.
53
54 The parallel with that one will see, quite predictably, a
55 lower serum cholesterol level in such populations. If the
56 dietary changes go far enough, heart disease will actually
57 reverse. By that I mean the blockages, the
58 atherosclerotic blockages in the coronary arteries and
59 elsewhere will begin to regress.
60
