Day 296 - 07 Nov 96 - Page 17
1 You may remember that Professor Vernon Wheelock, McDonald's
2 own consultant, admitted finally that there is a
3 considerable amount of evidence that diseases such as
4 obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease
5 stroke and some forms of cancer are related to a diet high
6 in fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar, low in dietary
7 fibre, and he said that we have now reached a point where
8 we can be very confident that diet is the primary factor in
9 the development of most of the degenerative diseases in
10 many industrialised countries, and that included cancer.
11
12 He agreed that it was not sensible to encourage people to
13 eat foods which are high in fat, saturated fat, sugar,
14 sodium and low in fibre, which is precisely what McDonald's
15 are doing; they are continually marketing those very
16 products and encouraging people to eat more and more of
17 them and at the same time trying to promote them as if they
18 were nutritious.
19
20 We heard in relation to that point, that despite the fact
21 that McDonald's is claiming to support the Health of the
22 Nation Dietary Initiatives, which were put in place to try
23 to improve the population's health, that that claimed
24 support has had no effect at all on their marketing
25 department. That was admitted by John Hawkes, who is their
26 chief marketing officer.
27
28 We heard that they do not have a nutrition department and
29 that Mr. Oakley, who was the senior vice president of
30 McDonald's UK, had said that it was not felt to be an
31 important enough issue to have a separate nutritional
32 department, like the company has a marketing or a
33 communications department. So we say that is a clear
34 indication of the fact that their so-called support for
35 Health of the Nation Dietary Initiatives is basically just
36 another PR stunt. There have been public pronouncements in
37 the newspaper about how they support that, how they are
38 working towards implementing it, although it is quite clear
39 that any changes they are making are very slow, minimal,
40 and are only being done because of the huge amount of
41 pressure that the company has come under from
42 nutritionists.
43
44 Just on the point about their own promotional literature
45 and the paragraph in the fact sheet about McDonald's trying
46 to show in their nutrition guides that the mass produced
47 hamburgers, chips and Colas and milk shakes, et cetera, are
48 a useful and nutritious part of any diet. We obviously
49 questioned McDonald's own witnesses at length on this
50 matter, and you may remember that at the end of the day
51 they all basically agreed that all 'nutritious' meant to
52 them was foods that contain nutrients. That was Edward
53 Oakley, chief purchasing officer and senior vice president
54 of McDonald's UK, who said that. He is the person
55 responsible for the nutrition guides that were available in
56 the McDonald's stores.
57
58 David Green, the senior vice president of marketing in the
59 USA, said the same and he even thought that Coca-cola was
60 nutritious because it provided water and that was part of a
