Day 049 - 09 Nov 94 - Page 14
1 has happened on a day where the particular witness's
2 evidence is not likely to be very long and, in fact, I
3 would be surprised if we did not have a very short day
4 today. It is working now but we are doing no more. If it
5 goes for any reason, we will just persist; it is back to
6 slate and chalk, which is the normal procedure.
7
8 (To the witness) What you last told me was that children
9 at a very young age could not tell the difference between
10 being sold to and not being sold to; they just thought they
11 were receiving information that it was a good product.
12
13 Do you want to move on from there, Ms. Steel?
14
15 MS. STEEL: I think she was moving on to adults and talking to
16 adults, or something.
17
18 (To the witness) Do you remember what you were talking
19 about?
20 A. I do, actually.
21
22 Q. Can you carry on then, please?
23 A. I was going to say I have also done hundreds of talks
24 to adults. You were talking about what is called the
25 pester power of children, and I was just going to say that
26 a lot of adults also mention the influence that the
27 children have over them in getting them to take them to
28 what they would term a junk food place like McDonald's, and
29 that they took them there for a treat because the
30 advertising was so successful in making the children think
31 that it was a fun place to go to, even if the parent did
32 not really want to take them there.
33
34 Q. They thought that they would keep the family happy?
35 A. Parents often give in to what their children want, to
36 keep the peace.
37
38 Q. Did they indicate that they were happy about it?
39 A. It depended on the parents. Some really did not really
40 think about it very much, and some of them were not happy
41 about it, because they thought that -- what is mentioned
42 quite a lot is that a lot of parents think their children
43 eat much too much junk food, and so they moan about the
44 amount of times. I mean, with an older child, they would
45 use their dinner money to go to somewhere like McDonald's
46 or another burger bar; and they would moan about it,
47 generally.
48
49 Q. Was that something that children said, as well, that they
50 went there at school lunch time instead of having school
51 dinners?
52 A. The older children did, yes, and do, yes.
53
54 Q. There was a bit I missed out, actually, which I forgot to
55 ask about, on the first page. You mentioned about
56 children, or teenagers, saying that one of the reasons they
57 did not want to be vegetarian was because they did not want
58 to be laughed at for refusing to go to McDonald's. Did
59 they explicitly say that or -- well, what did they say
60 along those lines?
