Day 266 - 20 Jun 96 - Page 44


     
     1
     2   MR. RAMPTON:   Could I ask you, Mrs. Brophy, to please replace
     3        that fat orange file.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, that has been taken away.
     6
     7   MR. RAMPTON:  That has gone, has it?   The one you want now is
     8        your own written statement, the typed one that you made for
     9        this case.
    10        A.   I am with you.
    11
    12   Q.   You are.  On page 1 you have given an analysis of two
    13        McDonald's meals which you found in some of their
    14        literature, I think dating from 1985.  I am not quarreling
    15        with your calculations at all.  Do you agree, and I assume
    16        from what you have told us already that you do, that the
    17        importance of any particular meal, unless it be toxic, is
    18        the place that it has in a person's overall diet?
    19        A.   To a certain extent, but when you are enabling people
    20        to make changes in their diet, then the changes have to be
    21        fairly complete.  So, in other words, it is a change in
    22        style of eating as opposed to changing a particular meal.
    23
    24   Q.   I understand the problem you face as a dietary advisor, if
    25        I can call you that.  I understand that entirely, and I do
    26        not quarrel with it at all.  But as a matter of scientific
    27        fact, the particular composition of an individual meal is
    28        only important when one has regard to the overall diet of
    29        the consumer.  Do you agree with that?
    30        A.   Yes, but I was just trying to go back to the original
    31        report.  I mean, in terms of McDonald's meals, children are
    32        very big consumers of McDonald's meals and I find that very
    33        worrying, because if you look at the calorie requirements
    34        of children, then it is very hard to see where they are
    35        going to fit in all the good bits of their diet when most
    36        of their day's intake, if you like, their calorie intake,
    37        you know, has been taken over by a McDonald's type meal.
    38
    39   Q.   I do not suppose you are familiar, are you -- you may be, I
    40        do not know -- with what I might call the frequency figures
    41        for McDonald's customers?  You say "children are big
    42        consumers of McDonald's meals", but I do not suppose --
    43        correct me if I am wrong -- you know, actually, how many
    44        meals per week or per month or per six months are consumed
    45         -- McDonald's meals, I mean -- by different age groups
    46        within the population?
    47        A.   I would guess you could probably come up with
    48        calculations where you put, say, one McDonald's meal in per
    49        week and, you know, the rest of the diet is healthy.  I
    50        could imagine you could come up with something that met the
    51        government's dietary reference values.
    52 
    53        However, I would say that is a very unrealistic way of
    54        working because you are looking at a style of eating.  If
    55        you eat, you know, a Big Mac and French Fries and apple
    56        pies your taste buds are accustomed to high salt, high fat,
    57        sweets and sort of a fatty type meal.  When you are
    58        persuading people to adopt a health promoting type diet,
    59        then it is looking at changing their taste buds, if you
    60        like, to go for foods that do not have that problem.

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