Day 025 - 16 Sep 94 - Page 13
1 Q. My Lord, the reference, if your Lordship would like it, is
2 page 54, from line 53 of yesterday's transcript down to
3 line 7 on page 55. That means, does it not, that if you
4 are careful in what you eat you can eat a typical
5 McDonald's meal every day of the week without exceeding
6 your recommended allowances, does it not?
7 A. It would be an imbalanced, an unbalanced diet to do so
8 because you would be bulking out your consumption of
9 calories, carbohydrates, fats and sodiums in one meal a
10 day. I believe health authorities recommend not binging
11 in one meal. So you could do it and still average out if
12 you were to cut very far back on your consumption in the
13 other two meals to the point that what you were having was
14 a breakfast, snack, a luncheon repast from McDonald's,
15 then a snack for supper as well. You could do it, but it
16 is not a recommended method of eating.
17
18 Q. Why do you call them "snacks"? It is not a question
19 necessarily of bulk; it is a question of what is in the
20 food that you eat. If I go home and eat a salad in the
21 evening, having had a McDonald's meal for lunch, I am
22 doing exactly what the nutritionists advise me to do?
23 A. It would depend on what sort of salad dressing and
24 what the contents of your salad were. I do not know what
25 you call it, it may be the same. A chef salad containing
26 meat and cheese and a high fat salad dressing, then you
27 would not be doing yourself a favour in terms of balancing
28 out the meal from McDonald's. You would be more
29 precarious than that.
30
31 Q. Or if I came home and had a delightful meal of spinach
32 and, let us say, grilled fish without adding any butter to
33 it, I would be doing exactly what I am advised to do,
34 would I not?
35 A. I would not necessarily agree with your
36 characterisation of it as "delightful". It probably would
37 be relatively low in fats. I think it could well be quite
38 high in sodium depending on the fish, depending on the way
39 the spinach was prepared. I am by no means a
40 nutritionist, Mr. Rampton. All I know in this case is
41 what the average diet should be and what McDonald's
42 products do contain by way of nutrients.
43
44 Q. That is what I was getting at, Mr. Gardner. Naturally
45 enough, if you are to prosecute people for what you
46 suppose to be a deceptive food advertisement, you have to
47 know a little bit about nutrition, but you are not a
48 nutrition expert, are you?
49 A. I am not, no, sir.
50
51 Q. You are content to leave that to the experts who will and
52 have given evidence in this court, yes?
53 A. I am content to leave that to experts overall who
54 might have been found to be reliable. I do not know the
55 experts who have testified in this court and could not
56 tell the court that I am confident to leave it to them;
57 that would be up to the court, Mr. Rampton.
58
59 Q. Tell me something, you are an expert in American law --
60 that I accept unreservedly, Mr. Gardner -- in American
