Day 032 - 06 Oct 94 - Page 52
1 East of England.
2 A. To her. She was one of the consumers we asked to
3 write to McDonald's to see whether they would give this
4 information.
5
6 MS. STEEL: So the date of the letter is 25th November 1987.
7 Just for the record, it says: "Thank you for your letter
8 regarding the ingredients in our products. We do not
9 publish a comprehensive list of ingredients. However, I
10 will investigate the particular ingredients you are
11 interested in and contact you in due course".
12
13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What was the page in document 54 you were
14 reading from?
15
16 MS. STEEL: Page 125. It is an internal page number. Looking
17 at the information that was available at that time from
18 McDonald's, you need to get pink volume -- unless you have
19 a copy of the Nutrition Guide itself -- VI, No. 9?
20 A. I have the third edition, July 1985.
21
22 Q. That is the same one. Looking at that, does that appear
23 to give all the information that a concerned consumer
24 might want to know?
25 A. I do not believe it does. It fails to give sugar
26 levels in the foods listed and I think, anyway, most
27 customers and consumers would need a calculator and
28 perhaps certain qualifications in dietetics to convert
29 these figures into something meaningful for a healthy
30 diet. Also, of course, it gives no ingredients listings,
31 which many of the people I was in touch with at the time
32 of doing the book were particularly concerned about. They
33 wanted to know about additives and other types of
34 ingredients besides the obvious.
35
36 Q. This is probably a daft question, but there is no
37 reference to saturated fat on there, is there, or there is
38 no column for saturated fat?
39 A. True.
40
41 Q. Would that be something that was important?
42 A. Clearly, in 1983 or 4 the NACNE Report came in which
43 it focused specifically on both total fats and saturated
44 fats, also on salts and sugars. This does not give you
45 saturated fats. It does not give you sugars. So in both
46 those counts it would be difficult and, anyway, as I have
47 said, it would be difficult to interpret from these sorts
48 of figures whether you are eating a high or low fat food
49 or a food particularly rich in sugars or saturated fats.
50
51 Q. Actually, this might be worth pointing out, that at the
52 bottom of the page that says "What we put into our food",
53 it says: "McDonald's would like to acknowledge the help
54 of the British Nutrition Foundation in considering and
55 commenting on this publication." Bearing in mind the
56 briefing paper from the British Nutrition Foundation that
57 we looked at earlier, do you think this would be an
58 adequate response to those concerns expressed in there?
59 A. Well, the concerns expressed in there, by and large,
60 do not talk about providing information to the public, but
