Day 030 - 03 Oct 94 - Page 39


     
     1        A.  Of course not.
     2
     3   Q.   Just going to a point which came up before lunch:  When I
     4        asked you about foods that were worse nutritionally than
     5        the average diet would be a negative contribution, would
     6        it also be a negative contribution in terms of the
     7        recommended dietary guidelines?
     8        A.  If the composition of that foods were, from a
     9        nutritional point of view, worse than the food that is on
    10        average eaten, yes, again, of course.
    11
    12   Q.   But as applied to the dietary guidelines, would it be even
    13        worse?
    14        A.  Yes.
    15
    16   Q.   But dietary guidelines generally are -- what is the word
    17         -- can you just sum up the dietary guidelines, how they
    18        relate to the average?
    19        A.  Let me give you an example of fat or saturated fat, if
    20        you like.  If you go into a shop -- I really need a
    21        calculator to work this out but the figures make the point
    22         -- on average in this country the amount of fats as a
    23        percentage of total calories consumed, total energy
    24        consumed, is about 40 per cent, that is to say, of every
    25        five calories people on average consume two for fat.
    26
    27        The recommendation from government there, well, it varies
    28        a little bit, but it tends to be between about 33 and 35
    29        per cent.  The contribution in the national average diet
    30        from saturated fat, it depends which year you are talking
    31        about, but it is very close to 20 per cent, that is to
    32        say, about one in five of all calories on average consumed
    33        in this country are from saturated fat and the
    34        recommendation there from government is to cut consumption
    35        of saturated fat by much more than that.
    36
    37   Q.   One more question before we move on to the references
    38        specifically:  McDonald's have said in this case that
    39        their food can be considered a healthy part of a balanced
    40        diet.  Would you like to -----
    41        A.  Do they say healthy part of a balanced diet or part of
    42        a balanced diet?
    43
    44   Q.   All right, can be eaten as part of a balanced diet, would
    45        you -----
    46        A.  That sounds rather more like it.  Well, when sections
    47        of the food industry who are manufacturing products that
    48        are in the sense already defined unhealthy wish to defend
    49        that position from a nutritional point of view, what they
    50        tend to say is there is no thing as healthy food, there is 
    51        only healthy diet, there is no such thing as unhealthy 
    52        food, there is only unhealthy diet, which in a sense is a 
    53        truism, inasmuch as it is argumentative, it is misleading.
    54          The point that, say, manufacturers of chocolate
    55        confectionery -- not to name any in this court, irrelevant
    56        to this case -- would make would be similar.  They would
    57        say:  "It is all right to eat this sort of food once in a
    58        while, possibly as fun food, as long as everything else
    59        you eat makes up for it" which, of course, again is
    60        obviously true unless an individual in question is

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