Day 025 - 16 Sep 94 - Page 19
1 McDonald's and have a perfectly well balanced meal, can
2 you not?
3 A. What meal are you referring to, Mr. Rampton?
4
5 Q. Say you had a salad and some fish, a diet coke perhaps?
6 A. I do not know, but I have a relatively dim memory,
7 having not looked at it in years, that McDonald's salad
8 dressing provided was more than the recommended serving
9 for salad dressing and was relatively high in sodium.
10 I also believe their fish product was fried, and again it
11 is not in this ad so I cannot refer to it, maybe it is
12 elsewhere, but that it would be -- the filet-o-fish
13 sandwich, for instance, has 799 milligrams of sodium and
14 26 grams of fat. That coupled with whatever amounts of
15 fat and sodium would be in the large packet of salad
16 dressing, no, I would not say that was a very healthy
17 meal. It might be at a break even point for 30 per cent
18 consumption of calories from fat; it might be at
19 approximately the average for the quantity of sodium one
20 should take in one meal, but it would not be the type that
21 is necessary to off set if you had another meal at
22 McDonald's. It is too high in fat and sodium.
23
24 Q. You do distinguish -- I think we are agreed about this --
25 between a healthy meal and a healthy diet, do you not?
26 A. Yes.
27
28 Q. Do you envisage the victims of this so-called deceptive
29 campaign eating McDonald's meals three times a day, 365
30 times a year?
31 A. No, sir.
32
33 Q. Then why does it matter?
34 A. Because people should not be lied to, Mr. Rampton.
35
36 Q. Where is the lie in it?
37 A. I work on the assumption that a half truth is a whole
38 lie. It is a saying of one of our eminent Supreme Court
39 Jurists, and it is inappropriate; it is illegal to tell
40 people only half the truth in order to sell a product.
41 Whether McDonald's does it or any other manufacturer of
42 food or any other product in our country.
43
44 Q. So is the position really this, that absent a health
45 warning any encouragement to the public to buy McDonald's
46 food is deceptive; is that right?
47 A. No, sir.
48
49 Q. Should it have on it the sort of thing we find on
50 cigarette packets in this country: "This food may kill
51 you"?
52 A. I do not have an opinion on that. It was not, and is
53 not, my job to decide what kind of warnings should be on
54 products. It was my job to enforce State law. State law
55 did not require that. I know that consumer groups that
56 I have worked with and that I have represented would like
57 to see those types of warnings. Whether or not they
58 should be, I do not actually have an opinion.
59
60 Q. Is that not the effect of what you are telling us?
