Day 298 - 11 Nov 96 - Page 16
1 know, once you get into a habit of eating those kinds of
2 foods it is very hard to change and to eat healthy foods
3 and that is just a fact of life. McDonald's know that and
4 that is why they have such high levels of fat, salt and
5 sugar in their food.
6
7 Therefore, by default, they are making less attractive the
8 kind of basic foods that people should be encouraged to
9 eat; salads, vegetables, fruit, whatever. It is very hard
10 for parents to try to get kids to eat healthy food, I am
11 sure every parent will agree, when faced with this kind of
12 barrage of unhealthy food being promoted to their
13 children.
14
15 One last point on the compounding factor is that McDonald's
16 are actively selling up their food, as we have heard, in
17 the restaurants, in the stores, where they are encouraging
18 people to have more chips, larger portions of chips or
19 whatever, larger meals, additional things from McDonald's
20 than they might naturally want when they go in.
21
22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Let us take the five minute break there,
23 anyway.
24
25 MS. STEEL: Would it be possible to have 10 minutes, please?
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
28
29 (Short Adjournment)
30
31 MR. MORRIS: Just to say that although we are going to come on
32 to Mr. Fairgrieve fairly soon, that Professor Wheelock did
33 say, on day 15, page 20, line 29, that the proportion of
34 McDonald's customers who eat more than once a week is very,
35 very small. So he is obviously unaware, despite being the
36 nutritional consultant, to be charitable to him, he must be
37 unaware of the fact that, as we have heard, 2 to 4 percent
38 of their UK customer base eat several times per week, which
39 is something like half to a million people in the UK, and
40 that in the US 23 percent of visits, as I was correctly
41 reminded by Mr. Rampton, are from people who eat four plus
42 times per week. 23 percent of their visits would be 23
43 percent of 20 million, which would be 4.6 million people
44 every day, and in the US are eating at McDonald's four plus
45 times per week.
46
47 That figure actually kind of tallies with the UK figure.
48 Obviously we would expect something like 10 times what it
49 would be here in the UK, because of the number of meals
50 sold. And he was saying eat more than once a week. We are
51 talking about people eating several times a week, three
52 times or more than that. So he has either been misinformed
53 by McDonald's or he is misleading the court.
54
55 Can I just say a couple of things about my chart, my
56 calculations. Obviously it is a general picture. There
57 may be fluctuations. Some people may only eat that kind of
58 food at McDonald's for a couple of months at that kind of
59 regularity, but consequently some people may be -- if that
60 is the general picture, the fact that some people are
