Horizon

I'm sure McDonalds can provide a healthy diet in Britain at least. In America the burgers do seem that much bigger. The French have measured calorific values of Big Macs and traditional French fare and they compare favourably.

Hello John. I believe Micky D's has been suffering from some financial difficulties recently, not so much from a health-food backlash (though maybe that's part of it) but as a result of their overextension of franchises in the 1980s and 1990s. The problem in the States I think is that people are being pickier about what they eat now; not necessarily eating healthier food, but certainly tastier. And there are so many relatively cheap and better quality competitors - though perhaps that's just in the big cities. Certainly around here, there's little point in going to McDonalds when there are excellent diners and small, inexpensive pubs and restaurants just as close by.

Don't know about your inner-city areas, but in mine the McDonald's and other fast food restaurants have become very much like institutional cafeterias -- places where people have to go who aren't allowed to cook in their hotel rooms and can't afford to eat in really decent restaurants. So they eat in a franchise fast-food place, or a low-end taqueria, or one of these all-night donut-egg-bacon-and-Chinese places that may be unique to California.

(If Van Gogh was painting the "Night Cafe" in California now he'd be sitting through the night outside a corner donut-and-Chinese joint. And by morning he'd have a citation for obstructing the sidewalk.)

Fast food franchise restaurants used to have the image of being cleaner, nicer places than locally owned "greasy spoons" so that, for example, a middle-class family would identify a McDonald's as a comfortable, sanitary place to eat while on vacation in a strange city. Now, in an open-air social service campus like the San Francisco Tenderloin, fast food restaurants just seem like chow halls that have better hours and shorter lines than the soup kitchens. Some of the soup kitchens probably have higher standards for hospitality and food preparation both.

I taught English in Poland for about two years. The city I lived in for most of that time, Lublin (out of the way, but fairly large) had a big Burger King downtown, right by the transit hub.

It was an extremely popular hangout for middle class high school aged kids, and I have to admit it was strange at first watching people utilizing a fast food restaurant as if it were (in California terms) a cafe. Maybe an obvious point, but it seemed to illustrate something about how people choose to use the public spaces available to them.

By the time I was there any unusual fascination with western stuff had worn off except in rural areas. But, I think partially because a Burger King in Poland was quite a bit more expensive than in the states, it had a certain cache. I once talked to a successful (and rather snooty) academic who proudly announced to me that he'd rented the place out for his son's 13th birthday party.

One of the texts I would use sometimes in classes was your standard thing comparing differences in various cultures. It sternly instructed those who had important engagements at a fast food place in the states that once they picked up their burger, they should under no circumstances put it down again until they had eaten the whole thing. I thought it was silly. Then months later I find myself in a McDonald's in Krakow with a French woman; she takes two bites and puts her burger down, and I can't stop thinking, "Isn't she going to finish that?"

Another thing to consider is the large percentage of Americans who live in the suburban wastes. Where my mother lives, you have nothing but gargantuan strip malls and chain stores. If you want a cup of coffee, you go to Starbucks. If you want a meal for $5, you get fast food, and that's it. There's really no choice.

I taught English in Poland for about two years.

My sister had the same gig; indeed, I think she may have lived near Lublin too (maybe Lublin is the Polish equivalent of Guildford). You should tell us more about it some time.

Sure, I'll post on it when I get a chance. Rather swamped at the moment.

http://www.jacobgrier.com/humor/USALOWFAT.htm

Due to the unfortunate rule forbidding me from going anywhere alone on my class trip to Germany, Austria and Switzerland, I visited a McDonalds or Burger King in every city on the tour. The burgers seemed smaller and you had to buy the condiments. The best way that the European fast food joints cut down on calories was by making the soda tiny and expensive. Actually the soda was tiny and expensive everywhere. The only interesting thing was that they sold beer. At sixteen, ordering a Big Mac and a beer seemed continental.

We even found a Pizza Hut in Geneva. It was horrible – they put corn on the pizza. The wait staff also misunderstood our attempt to order a pitcher and brought us each a liter of soda.

Just be glad that you weren't unlucky enough to purchase a zapiekanka, a sort of elongated Polish pizza which they usually smother in gobs of very sweet ketchup.

Eating junk will make you fatter but maybe it will make you smarter.