Despite questionable health credentials, I’m sticking to the mantra that a varied diet is a healthy one.
Today, I eat McDonalds very occasionally, about once or twice a year, because I can’t shake the fact that I genuinely love a Big Mac. McDonalds is culturally entwined with my life in and around London, it’s been ubiquitous throughout my years and formed a backdrop to many memories which I still hold today. It turned the mighty Big Mac into the beast of a burger that it had never quite been. My favourite was a Big Mac made using quarter pounder patties and extra cheese. Having a girlfriend who worked at McDonalds came with massive benefits in the form of under-the-counter, fully customised meals of whatever I desired. When I was eighteen, my girlfriend was a manager at McDonalds. Later in my school days we’d meet at McDonalds before a big night out, furtively passing a whisky bottle around to liven up our extra-value meal drinks before hitting student night at the local crap club, stretching the term ‘student’ to it’s lower limit as we were studying at school. Yes, I remember when you could smoke in McDonalds and on buses. It seemed a rite of passage for children of the seventies to be locked into a walk-in freezer on their seventh birthday, before a crew member begrudgingly dressed as Hamburglar was tormented by us.Ī few years later, McDonalds became the place that my friends and I would hang out as gothic teenage mall-rats, being decidedly antisocial and using ashtrays as frisbees. As a kid I loved them and have fond memories of childhood birthdays being celebrated there.
This advertising seems to be densely targeted near to the large drive-thru McDonalds situated around the corner, in the hope that sight of a massive Big Mac on a bus shelter will cause people to enter a zombie-like state, marching tirelessly with rolled-back eyes until they reach the shiny touchscreen ordering altar of this global corporate church, where their bloodlust for fast food can be sated.ĭisliking McDonalds can be quite fashionable, especially in the oh-so-virtuous middle class health bubbles of foodie culture, but I’m not that person. These chicken joints make McDonalds look positively expensive and have the added bonus of resepctfully calling their customers ‘bossman’. I pondered whether it’s an attempt to overcome the proliferation of chicken shop takeaways offering £1 kids meals, which are abundant in this part of East London. My local neighbourhood is plastered with McDonalds adverts.