Day 296 - 07 Nov 96 - Page 22
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2 MS. STEEL: I think we are talking about cravings, anyway, a
3 kind of addiction. The point is that Mr. Beavers himself
4 admitted that he got "a craving for McDonald's hamburgers
5 or French fries from time to time".
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7 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am not sure it did not all arise
8 originally, because I remember when it arose in the autumn
9 of 1993 I think the suspicion might have been that there
10 was a craving in some medical kind of sense as opposed to
11 acquiring a strong taste for.
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13 MS. STEEL: Some circles do view that as a medical matter.
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15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, but it seemed to me that what you were
16 batting for was the latter rather than the former.
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18 MS. STEEL: I mean, to us it was just -- I mean, people talk
19 about a sweet tooth and so on, and to us it is just so
20 obvious that it defied common sense that McDonald's had
21 even complained about it. Anyway, that quote from
22 Mr. Beavers was on day 123, page 48, line 51.
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24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
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26 MS. STEEL: Can I just say there is a bit of overlap; some of
27 the things I am referring to, they do relate to advertising
28 as well.
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30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I appreciate that. In fact, I have made one
31 or two notes of one or two of the things Mr. Beavers said
32 in relation to advertising.
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34 MS. STEEL: Right. I will try not to be too repetitive.
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36 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It does not matter. If things have been
37 taken fairly shortly, just sort of marking them out, as it
38 were, it does not matter if you say them in more than one
39 context.
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41 MS. STEEL: Right. Okay. We have seen McDonald's own
42 documents from the United States that show that 77 percent
43 of customer visits to their stores, i.e. three out of every
44 four people who come through the doors, are from heavy
45 users who eat at McDonald's an average of three times a
46 week. Mr. Fairgrieve agreed that such customers were the
47 type of people who were most likely to also eat at other
48 fast food outlets and obviously that has implications on
49 their diet -- sorry, that has implications for the evidence
50 about the make-up of people's diet who eat at McDonald's.
51 (Pause)
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53 We heard from Mr. Green, McDonald's senior vice president
54 of marketing in the USA, that 11 percent of visits to
55 McDonald's in the USA were from super heavy users who ate
56 there four or more times per week. And Mr. Green said that
57 the company's marketing strategy was to target heavy users
58 to increase their frequency of visits, so not only are
59 there concerns about the fact that people are eating at
60 McDonald's so frequently, but, on top of that, there is
