Day 037 - 14 Oct 94 - Page 27
1
2 MR. MORRIS: This is from 1985, I believe. It has not got a
3 date on it.
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5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Mine has UK February '85 in one corner.
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7 MR. MORRIS: You said "a pretty awful document"; you had better
8 give an indication on what the problems are briefly?
9 A. The obvious problem arises directly from what we have
10 just been discussing, which is saturated fat. If you look
11 -- I am afraid I cannot give you a page number -- but if
12 you look at the page that begins "What you get out of it".
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14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Our page 59C.
15 A. Yes. You will see there is no measure at all for
16 saturated fat. Now -----
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18 MR. RAMPTON: I do not know if Mr. Morris mentioned the date of
19 the document; it might be worth mentioning.
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21 MS. STEEL: We did.
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23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, it is February '85.
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25 THE WITNESS: Again, I would characterise this as fundamentally
26 unethical. If you are intending to give important
27 nutritional information, then you have an obligation to do
28 so, specifically with reference to saturated fat because
29 it is one of the most important factors in modern diet and
30 disease. McDonald's fail to do this. In my view, this is
31 a dreadful example of advertising copyrighting gone wrong.
32
33 MR. MORRIS: Is there any other, apart from the saturated fat,
34 while we are on this document, aspects of the advice they
35 are giving?
36 A. Yes. I would like to draw your attention to the page
37 that begins "Golden rules for healthy eating". This is a
38 jolly good example of advertising copyrighting using
39 weazel words, weazel expressions, with a view to
40 ultimately confusing and certainly misleading the person
41 who reads it.
42
43 If I can draw your attention to the second paragraph, each
44 paragraph is very short. The left-hand column under the
45 main heading which reads "Variety" and the paragraph
46 begins, "That is why it is impossible to say that one meal
47 in isolation is better than another. It is what you eat
48 overall that counts". This is an extension of the idea
49 that no food is better than any other food. No single
50 food is better than any other single food in nutritional
51 terms.
52
53 They have extended this concept considerably further here
54 by saying that one meal cannot be said or judged to be
55 better than another meal, and that is an important word to
56 which I will be referring again in a moment because
57 McDonald's definition of a meal, I think, is particularly
58 interesting.
59
60 I suspect that were this leaflet to be reissued again and
