Forty is a long time in food years.
And it does seem that the US fast-food chain McDonald's has been with us here in the UK longer than four decades, such has been its lasting effect on our eating habits. Believe it or not, though, I reckon it's not been all bad.
The adverse health effects of eating too many saturated fat, salt and sugar-laden burgers (especially when served with fries and cheese) have been well documented. But I reckon it's their 24/7 availability to take away and consume anywhere we choose that has really changed the way we eat. Traditional thrice-daily meal-times have been eroded, first to brunch and now to what the food writer William Sitwell dubbed "drunch": lunch morphing into dinner.
The highly-hyped McDonald's introduced the British psyche to the concept of all-day grazing and broke the accepted convention of eating around the table with family and friends. It suited the cult of the individual that was emerging in the early 1980s - and, I'd posit, the opportunity for secret eating.
I agree with my fellow food writer Bee Wilson that the chain played a significant part in the transformation of our palates. She said the burger meals pushed the British taste for salty-sour into a liking for the salty-sweet flavours so distinctive in McDonald's food.
On the other hand, if we hadn't had McDonald's, we might not have had Slow Food, a campaign founded in Italy by Carlo Petrini in the 1980s as a protest against a branch of the fast-food chain opening in Rome. It's now a global grassroots movement dedicated to the enjoyment of slow-cooked, locally sourced food eaten convivially with others (that's why its local branches are called "convivia").
Slow Food Scotland was formed to co-ordinate and expand active convivia in Aberdeenshire, Edinburgh and West of Scotland. Scots membership of the SF Chefs Alliance - meaning they commit to championing small-scale producers - has grown has to include Carina Contini, Andrew Fairlie, Martin Wishart, Tom Kitchin, Marcello Tully (Kinloch Lodge), Michael Smith (Three Chimneys), Colin Clydesdale (Ubiquitous Chip), Dominic Jack (Castle Terrace), Graeme Pallister (63 Tay St), Charles Lockeley (Boath House), Tom Lewis (Monachyle Mhor), Nick Nairn, and more. They join an impressive list of top UK chefs that includes Michel Roux Jr, Pierre Koffman and Raymond Blanc.
And then there's the artisan burger. Handcrafted from prime locally and sustainably reared cuts, they're cooked to order by a team of predominantly hip, foodie-aware young men whose independent outlets Burger Meets Bun, Bread Meets Bread, Meathammer and Smoak are among the headliners taking the modern burger world by storm on the strength of being the antithesis to fast-food versions like McDonald's.
Inevitably, the big boys are muscling in. Glasgow is to have a branch of the London chain Gourmet Burger Kitchen, in addition to Edinburgh's. Burger bars are now crowding city centres to the extent they're in danger of facing a consumer backlash. How ironic is that?
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