McDonald's does something latte-lovers find terrible: it makes food that lots of people really like eating and it sells that tasty food at prices ordinary people can afford.
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Go to any of the chain's fast-food outlets (you wouldn't quite call them restaurants) and you will find queues of people, many of them sitting in vehicles driving through. The queues won't be long because (unlike in fancy barista-run coffee shops), McDonald's' efficiency of production and service is awesome.
Nobody forces people to eat at McDonald's. There is no magical mind-pull from the McDonald's Corp headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. Of our own free will, 1.7 million of us eat at Australia's 869 McDonald's every day.
We may order high-calorie items - and, clearly, many of the men in the trucks in the drive-through do - but the calorific content is clearly marked and it is a freely made choice.
By the way, in my opinion, the coffee and the tea are better than they are in some overpriced places where baristas serve. And it comes faster.
So what's the problem?
Class and snobbery, I would say, and a side plate of anti-Americanism. I overstate the case (not for the first time) but there is something about McDonald's which gets the (no doubt organic) goat of nice middle-class people.
When you go into McDonald's, the calorific content is there for you to see and choose from. Is that true of the trendy coffee shop you usually frequent?
I did wonder if the ACT's Labor and Green government would have been so quick to block a new McDonald's in Chisholm if the proposed fooderie had been some sort of server of macrobiotic, organic, vegan sludge laced with beetroot and celery juice.
I wondered, but banished the thought in shame when I went to the pub and discovered it was a lovely, friendly bar. The Chisholm Family Tavern deserves to survive. It is a down-to-earth, welcoming pub.
But a McDonald's would be nice, too.
There is a posh anti-McDonald's prejudice which dismisses the feelings of ordinary people who clearly love the food the company provides. The opponents of the latest McDonald's in Canberra implicitly conceded the popularity of the restaurant they blocked by saying that one of the problems would be the volume of traffic.
The American mega-corporation is sometimes singled out as a seller of unhealthy food - but is it any less healthy than the rows of beers the Chisholm Family Tavern offers? Or its "cutlets, schnitzels and seafood basket"?
MORE STEVE EVANS:
Is McDonald's any less healthy than much more expensive places? Gourmet Traveller cites Aubergine as one of the best restaurants in Canberra. For $120, Aubergine serves five courses which include steak and fried cheese ("ricotta fritter"). Delicious it may well be, but is it healthier than a Big Mac?
What about the restaurant's signature dish of "brown butter ice-cream", which arrives "encircled by layers of almond praline and frozen lemon verbena milk made with liquid nitrogen"? Low-calorie it ain't.
With the epidemic, obesity has come to the fore. As Professor Luigi Fontana of the University of Sydney School of Medicine put it: "Two in three Australians are overweight or obese, a condition that markedly increases the risk of being admitted to intensive care and having poorer outcomes, including higher mortality, when infected with COVID-19."
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says: "Excess weight, especially obesity, is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnoea, psychological issues, some musculoskeletal conditions and some cancers."
When you go into McDonald's, the calorific content is there for you to see and choose from.
Is that true of the trendy coffee shop you usually frequent?
- Steve Evans is a Canberra Times reporter.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
