Day 298 - 11 Nov 96 - Page 13
1 So anyway, going back to the point, if - and these are
2 rough calculations, guidelines - if an average McDonald's
3 meal, which is what we are talking about in the fact sheet,
4 is something like 40 percent of calories from fat, and some
5 may be higher, some may be lower, if a safe level of fat in
6 the diet is less than 20 percent, which is going on the --
7 we are talking about the health here, we are not talking
8 about realism, we are talking about what is healthy for
9 somebody and the World Health Organisation would like a
10 maximum to be something down that range, 15 percent, maybe
11 -- and this is the maximum, so say less than 20 percent in
12 the diet, which also goes along with Professor Campbell's
13 view and Dr. Barnard's view and virtually everyone else who
14 has been asked about it -- say the average person eats 21
15 meals a week, which again could be less, could be more,
16 then if -- now, the next but one line, if an average meal
17 is a thousand kilocalories, the exact figure irrelevant,
18 the point being that it does not matter for these
19 calculations what the number of calories is, because we are
20 just trying to say that it is the percentages that count,
21 so we are just assuming an average meal is a thousand
22 kilocalories and people on average would eat 21,000
23 kilocalories in a week from 21 meals.
24
25 The point being the fat should be less than 20 percent,
26 i.e., it should be less than 4,200 kilocalories. That
27 should be the fat consumption for health concerns. If one
28 eats three McDonald's meals of approximately 40 percent
29 calories from fat in a week, they are getting 1,200
30 calories from fat, which only leaves less than 3,000
31 calories from fat for the rest of the 18 meals in the week,
32 to stick within the maximum guideline for concern about
33 health risks. So 3,000 over 18 is basically calories from
34 fat, less than, per meal, which is less than 16.6 percent
35 average of calories from fat for each meal for the rest of
36 the week.
37
38 If we go to somebody who is eating six times a week at
39 McDonald's, the calculations come out that you would have
40 to have less than 12 percent for the other 15 meals in the
41 week, calories from fat. That is the calculations. Now,
42 obviously these are rough calculations, but they show for a
43 start....
44
45 Well, first of all, the government does not consider it
46 realistic that people can get their fat consumption in a
47 country like England or even the USA below 30 to 35
48 percent, because of the dietary habits; therefore, that is
49 why they have made such conservative recommendations. But
50 to expect somebody who is eating at McDonald's three or six
51 times a week to have an average for the rest of their meals
52 12 percent or 16 percent less than those for the rest, is
53 completely impossible, and therefore people eating that
54 amount of times at McDonald's per week are putting
55 themselves at additional risk from whatever else they are
56 eating in their diet, an unrecoverable risk, purely from
57 their consumption of McDonald's food.
58
59 Now, there are all sorts of things to be taken into
60 consideration. First of all, this does not include the
