Lucky Iceland

In the last post I spoke about Starbucks - I haven't received a reply yet, but I am still hoping. On a related food-drink-chain topic, about 3 years ago on the 1st of January, I made a New Year's resolution not to visit McDonalds for a whole year. No more Big Mac, no more fries, no more volcanic apple pie.

The main reason was to avoid fatty food and as the year proceeded I noticed that when I walked near to a McDonalds outlet, I was overwhelmed by the stench of fat and had no desire to ever return. I haven't been in one of their branches since.

We all know that this is just fast food and it can taste great, but the meal has so many calories and fat that I don't want to eat it and then feel guilty for doing so. It's not actually that cheap in the UK, so if I am going to spend that much and eat all that fat, give me a high quality meal instead please.

Something else I noticed is the amount of rubbish with the golden 'M' that you see near (and not so near) to a McDonalds. I'm not saying that they are the only fast food chain that produces rubbish, but due to their success, the local roads and lanes have wrappers thrown down by selfish idiots. I call it McFly tipping. Why someone can't put their KFC greedy-bastard bucket in the bin always amazes me.

Those lucky people in Iceland are losing their McDonalds due to the recession, so it's back to fish for them. It would be no loss to me, but spotty kids may be upset to lose their regular dose.

There is an interesting economic factor to the MacDonalds global success and it's the Big Mac Index. It uses the price of a Big Mac to compare currency values on the Big Mac as services should cost the same in both currencies in theory. It was published by The Economist and has also meant a new word in the English language - burgernomics.