Day 024 - 15 Sep 94 - Page 44


     
     1        misleading or deceptive.  But we were reaching that in
     2        order to determine whether or not the law had been
     3        violated; that was our charge and that is what we were
     4        doing when we wrote McDonald's this letter and when we did
     5        the research necessary to come up with the conclusions
     6        reflected in that letter.
     7
     8   Q.   The specific menu items where the nutritional information
     9        is given in that advertisement, you were saying you were
    10        looking at the brochures.  How did that compare with the
    11        brochure?  If you want, you could turn and look at the
    12        brochure.
    13        A.  Well, what I was saying was we would use the
    14        information that they had lowered the sodium in their
    15        pickles by 21 per cent to consider against what net
    16        reduction that possibly could have with respect to the
    17        items on which their pickles were sold.
    18
    19        McDonald's did not sell a pickle.  They are referring to
    20        these dills, hamburger dill slices, I presume, that they
    21        put on to their hamburgers, two maybe three slices of
    22        pickle per hamburger, and a relatively small component,
    23        one of the more insignificant ingredients of the
    24        hamburger.  So that lowering sodium in pickles by 21 per
    25        cent would have a negligible effect on the sodium that was
    26        present in the product in which the pickle was an
    27        ingredient.
    28
    29        In other words, the lowering of sodium in one ingredient
    30        in a hamburger would have a negligible effect on the
    31        nutritional level of sodium in the hamburger itself.
    32
    33   Q.   In terms of the chart, the four items, the four food
    34        items, that are listed there, did the sodium content of
    35        them appear to be typical of all of McDonald's products,
    36        you know, fairly average, or what?
    37        A.  Well, I do not believe so.  The products that people
    38        traditionally consume other than the fries which is
    39        laudably low in sodium are the other hamburger products
    40        which are much higher in sodium than the regular
    41        cheeseburger.
    42
    43   MS. STEEL:  Can I just ask, do we need actually to go to the
    44        brochure to compare it with the sodium content, or can we
    45        just do that in argument with you later?
    46
    47   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, you can do it in argument, but it
    48        follows from the incorporation of paragraph (1) that
    49        Mr. Gardner's evidence is that the four products listed,
    50        regular fries, regular cheeseburger, six piece McNuggetts 
    51        and vanilla milk shake had not, in fact, had their sodium 
    52        content lowered in the past year.  If that is challenged, 
    53        no doubt it will be.
    54        A.  Your Lordship, I did not mean to give that impression;
    55        if so, I -- presuming they are telling the truth that they
    56        lowered sodium in their pickles, then the sodium in the
    57        regular cheeseburger which I believe did contain pickles
    58        as an ingredient would perforce have been lowered, but it
    59        would have been lowered in a relatively negligible way;
    60        that pickles not being one of the prime contributors, I do

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