Examination of Witnesses (Questions 440-459)
MR JULIAN
HILTON-JOHNSON
AND MR
KEITH KENNY
29 JUNE 2004
Q440 Mr Jack: If I can be rude and interrupt
for a second, you said in your introduction that you did not have
an enormous uptake of that. Out of the 2.5 million that go in
a day, how many go away with a leaflet?
Mr Hilton-Johnson: Not many and
that is why we supplement it, for example, with quality campaigns
that run in magazines and on the television: we ran those earlier
this year and they related, for example, to beef quality—some
people question what goes into our hamburgers and we say it is
100% beef. We focus on other things as well such as cleanliness.
You can take the way in which we have reacted as well to various
food scares into consideration in considering how our customers
react to us. I think we were able to secure a fairly significant
amount of trust amongst our customer base, for example, at the
time of the BSE crisis in 1996 where we very regrettably took
British beef off our menu but it was because our customers told
us that they had no confidence in it. We polled them pretty much
on a daily basis on occasions and put British beef back on to
the menu just as soon as we were able to do so.
Q441 Mr Jack: You say that you poll your
customers and that you give a lot of information. What is it that
the customers perceive is okay in quality terms, in recipe terms
and in everything? They obviously put a lot of trust into McDonald's
that the basic hamburger product, notwithstanding what you have
been saying about salads, is good food to eat as I say against
this background of a very powerful message that you are part of
the junk food industry. Perhaps you do not accept that and challenge
me if I am wrong.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: I disagree
with the fundamental premise of junk food because I think it is
misleading. I think that most of our customers would understand
that a hamburger, for example, can fit in as part of a balanced
diet and that what is most important to focus on would be, for
example, whether people have junk diets or not. I think that people
do understand that a hamburger, for example, has more fat and
more calories in it that an apple or the fruit that we have introduced.
They get that fairly basic message.
Q442 Mr Jack: You have been bold enough
to provide the Committee with a document entitled "Main Menu"
which gives a very detailed breakdown of some of the ingredients
that go into your product and you have provided the leaflet that
you have just mentioned. You seem to be willing to help your customers
where necessary with a great deal of information but, as you probably
heard from our previous witnesses who are in the "treats"
business where people go to enjoy themselves as opposed to perhaps
refuelling at McDonald's, you are willing to provide all this
information because you do not think that it harms your business,
in fact you see it as an attribute to the business, yet our previous
witnesses said that if they had indulged in all of this, it would
be a turn-off. What is the difference?
Mr Hilton-Johnson: I think we
are very happy to provide this information because we do not feel
that we have anything to lose by it. Perhaps it is not a well-known
fact that a Big Mac Meal with a diet Coke contains less than a
third of my recommended daily intake of calories. It is actually
quite a powerful message. There are of course other products that
we sell that are higher in fat and calories. I think as well there
may be a difference between us and, say, a company like Whitbread
in their restaurant operations in that we have a much more standardised
menu and it is easier for us to provide information of this sort.
Q443 Mr Jack: You obviously feel an obligation
in a way or let us say a responsibility to provide this in the
eating-out world in which you operate. You have a very positive
philosophy of wanting to advise your customers.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: We do provided
of course that it does not interfere with what I might broadly
call "normal restaurant operations". We are a fast business
and we have to allow people to make choices very, very quickly
but we do not feel that we have anything to lose in terms of talking
about the content of our food because it fits into and can be
part of a balanced diet and it is as simple as that.
Q444 Mr Jack: And you almost felt an
obligation, I think you indicated earlier when you were talking
about the introduction of salads, to move towards this different
offer in terms of food as a result of the noise from Government
and customers.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: The noise principally
I would have to say or almost exclusively from customers. It would
be fairly pointless for us to put something on the menu because
the Government wanted us to if no one bought it.
Q445 Mr Jack: Do you think the very fact
that McDonald's offer salads in the way you are doing now is sending
out a very powerful message to food consumers that this is the
way they ought to be going? In other words, you have reacted to
the market but you could also be said by that message to be driving
it.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: There is a
possibility that that kind of message is getting out. It is not
why we have done it—as I said, we have done it because our
customers say they want it—but because we serve a very large
number of people and the fact that we are doing it, I am sure
that some people will take that out from it, yes.
Q446 Mr Jack: Do I conclude from that
that there is a powerful interplay between the official messages
which official bodies, Government, the Food Standards Agency are
putting out about what people ought to be eating and the perception
of the wider public of what that means to them and somehow it
gets translated into a message back to you that we would like
more choice and more salads? Is it as chainlike as that or not?
Mr Hilton-Johnson: I have never
thought about it specifically in that kind of way but I understand
the point you are making. I think the key for me is that companies
such as McDonald's that are large and that serve a large number
of people every day can very much be a force for good in the whole
obesity debate. As I have said, we have sold 3.5 million salads
since we introduced the range on 29 March. People come to us and,
with respect to Government, they probably trust us a lot more
than they trust Government. So, if the industry can engage properly
with Government, the messages will be very, very powerful. If
the industry does not engage with Government or if Government
send out confused messages, then it is going to be much more difficult
for people to understand messages about healthy eating. We fundamentally
believe that our product range, our food and drinks, sits very
easily within a balanced diet and a healthy active lifestyle and
that is why we are very, very pleased to engage and we have done
a fair amount, partly through things like this five-a-day leaflet—I
have to say that we have not been prosecuted for it yet; I did
open and check it a few moments ago—in which we say, "Keeps
kids healthy and boosts their immunity" which I think we
can probably get away with! I forget how many of these leaflets
we produced but they were in the hundreds of thousands and, because
they have been written in an engaging way and probably because
they are written by McDonald's, I think they are all the more
powerful.
Q447 Joan Ruddock: I am a little puzzled
and, as I had to dash out, maybe it is my fault. This is a piece
of information about the food that is on the main menu. This is
not your main menu.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: I am sorry,
what are you looking at?
Q448 Joan Ruddock: The one you distributed.
My reason for asking, if I can just explain it, is that this does
not include chips, it does not include any of the salads, just
meat, cheese and some vegetables but not salad dishes. As I understand
it, you do main courses which are a salad dish.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: Yes.
Q449 Joan Ruddock: But it is not on this.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: What you have
there is an extract from a book that is 38 pages long. This book
has been in existence since about 1984 in one shape or form and
Salads Plus is listed in it—we reprinted it—and, at
the same time that we introduced the Salads Plus range, we gave
information separately about it and one of these was given to
each person that bought Salads Plus for the first several weeks
that the new product range was available.
Q450 Joan Ruddock: Let me put to you
what I see as one of the difficulties. There are two issues. One
is that some people eat most of their meals in your outlets or
they buy them and take them away. I know families who collect
hamburgers for their breakfasts or bring their children to sit
in the outlet and eat their breakfast. Have you done any analysis
of the frequency with which some people actually eat in your establishments?
Mr Hilton-Johnson: Yes, of course.
Q451 Joan Ruddock: I would be interested
to know.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: I am not an
expert on it but the average people will come in of the people
who do come in will come in between two and three times a month.
I think there will be extremely few people who fall into the category
to which you refer, with respect. There may well be some but they
will be very, very few and far between.
Q452 Joan Ruddock: But it could be that
that small group of people, bearing in mind the millions you are
actually serving, are being seriously adversely affected by taking
this limited diet which does still have, I believe, quite a high
fat and salt content.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: It would depend
what they were eating and it would depend what their lifestyle
was like.
Q453 Joan Ruddock: Some of us know of
some of these lifestyles, I can assure you.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: We have never
advocated a one-dimensional lifestyle and it is slightly difficult
for us to police that particular aspect of our business. We cannot
stand at the front counter and tell people that they have had
enough in the way that you might be able to if you were serving
someone an alcoholic drink and someone appeared to by slightly
tipsy. It is very, very difficult to do this.
Q454 Joan Ruddock: If you were to move
to some kind of traffic light system such as has been discussed,
it would be more apparent were it to be raised in public consciousness
that they should not be eating all reds every single day, for
example. This could be helpful, could it not?
Mr Hilton-Johnson: I think most
people understand that they should not be eating certain types
of food all day every day.
Q455 Joan Ruddock: Some people do not.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: I would suggest
that those people are few and far between. We are interested in
the traffic light system. We do see certain issues with it given
the fact that we are a restaurant business and the fact that people
need to be able to make their choices about what they eat very
quickly. We are in the fast-food business and we have not endless
but a very large number of different permutations in the food
that we sell and that make up a meal combination. I also think—and
I believe we have research to this effect—that people are
more likely to respond to positive messaging—"This
is a good idea; this is why this is good for you"—and,
to be fair, this is what we have tried to do in our Happy Meal
than to something which simply says, "No, there is a red
cross here or a red traffic light" whatever it happens to
be. My own view is that positive messaging about benefits rather
than negative messaging about bad consequences is a better way
to go.
Q456 Joan Ruddock: Obviously it was a
positive message to introduce salads.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: Yes.
Q457 Joan Ruddock: How do you respond
to an analysis—I think it was in The Guardian—that
showed that the salads with the chicken and the salads with the
bacon, or maybe it is a combination of both, actually have as
many calories as your standard hamburger/beef burger?
Mr Hilton-Johnson: I am glad that
you have asked me that because it gives me the opportunity to
comment. Our salad range starts at a side salad which contains
13 calories. You then have a range of different options that you
can construct how you wish to. My own personal favourite is a
grilled chicken salad that has 222 calories in it. If you choose
to have fried chicken, obviously it goes up. If you choose to
have dressing, it goes up even further. If you choose to have
croutons, it goes up further still. I think it was a slightly
unfair comparison because these meals are main menu salads and
the comparison was not made against main menu, it was compared
to one hamburger only. So, I think it is a little disingenuous
to compare the two—I was going to say "apples and pears"
but that is probably a bad pun. The fact is that the Salads Plus
range starts at 13 calories and, for the full meal, it starts
at 222 calories and these are large salads. Honestly, that is
my favourite salad and, because it has cheese in it, my own personal
view is that it does not need any additional dressing or croutons.
Q458 Joan Ruddock: You said that a single
Big Mac and a diet Coke would only be a third of the daily calorie
intake, but what is the average meal going to be in terms of a
daily calorie intake if people have the whole range, the chips
and the sauces and the additions?
Mr Hilton-Johnson: It would depend
specifically on what that was going to be.
Q459 Joan Ruddock: You told us where
it starts; where does it end in terms of calorie content for your
meals?
Mr Kenny: It depends what you
have.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: If you have
an ice-cream and a large milkshake—
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