Day 001 - 28 Jun 94 - Page 41


     
     1        apt, and indeed intended, to seduce children into going to
              McDonald's, would it matter?
     2
              My Lord, we would submit that it would only matter if the
     3        food they ate when they got there was apt to do harm.  If,
              as I have suggested, that is absolutely not the case, then
     4        really the case on advertising falls away to nothing.
 
     5        I should tell your Lordship that Professor Wheelock has
              specifically studied the question of whether there is any
     6        likelihood that children may come to harm from eating
              McDonald's food.  His conclusion is that if a child eats a
     7        typical McDonald's meal of hamburger and regular french
              fries, medium sized diet coke and apple pie, which is
     8        quite a large meal, he will, therefore, consume 2.4 per
              cent of his weekly intake of calories in the form of total
     9        fat and 1.1 per cent in saturated fat.
 
    10        This must be contrasted with the recommended -- these are
              governments recommendations -- maximum weekly percentages
    11        which are, respectively, 35 per cent for total fat and 11
              per cent for saturated fat.  My Lord, the reference to
    12        that particular calculation, or the figures from which it
              is drawn, are yellow bundle Roman V/6, page 15 which is a
    13        table.
 
    14        It is in consequence of that calculation and other similar
              ones that I am able to assert that that same child could
    15        eat the same meal six more times in that same week and
              still achieve only a little over half of his recommended
    16        weekly intakes of total and saturated fat.
 
    17        Finally this, my Lord:  It might be thought, as
              I suggested earlier, that parents who decide to take on
    18        the responsibility of having children might be
              sufficiently responsible to ensure that their children are
    19        fed a balanced diet and do not eat an excess of any
              particular kind of food, whether it be McDonald's
    20        hamburgers or Cadbury's chocolate or Walls ice cream.
 
    21        With that I turn to food poisoning:  I express the issue
              here as this:  Are McDonald's customers exposed to any
    22        significant risk of food poisoning by eating at
              McDonald's?  Again the answer is they plainly are not.
    23        The reasons for this are, your Lordship may feel, really
              rather obvious.  I apologise for going into it.
    24
              Your Lordship will, I hope, forgive me for having from
    25        time to time addressed your Lordship as though your
              Lordship were a jury.  Were it nor for the peculiar 
    26        circumstances of this case, I would not have done that; 
              I would have opened the case a good deal more shortly and 
    27        in somewhat less than what might one call the jury
              manner.  I must do it for the reasons that your Lordship
    28        knows.  This is the first opportunity that McDonald's have
              had to destroy these allegations -- and I must make the
    29        best use of it that I can.
 
    30        Food poisoning:  Are McDonald's customers exposed to any
              significant risk of food poisoning by eating at the

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