Fast food is local food, says journalist who took pictures of McDonald’s all over the world

A few years ago, Gary He was standing in a McDonald’s in a Moroccan village during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when he had a eureka moment.

The New York-based writer and photojournalist noticed the fast food joint had a special menu item for Iftaar, the period when Muslims break their daily fasting during Ramadan.

“I saw this meal that involved a lot of local sweets and dates and a harira soup and a milk yogurt drink. And I just said to myself, like, OK, this is very localized,” He told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. 

“I couldn’t find anything about it online. And as a food journalist, I just said, how is this possible that the largest restaurant chain in the world did not have this documented somewhere? And so I just took it upon myself to start documenting it.”

Thus was born McAtlas, He’s new self-published photography book showcasing the ubiquitous fast food chain’s locations and menu items around the world, from a serene Japanese tea garden, to a drive-thru only accessible by skis high in the Swedish mountains.

“I don’t have an exact count, but I’ve definitely been to hundreds of McDonald’s across 55 countries and six continents,” He said.  “There’s a lot of walking involved when you do that much travelling. So, thankfully, it balanced out.”

Using a brand to tell a human story

He wants to make one thing clear: His book is neither funded, nor endorsed, by the McDonald’s corporation. 

“As a journalist, you want to tell stories that are meaningful and relatable, right? And there’s really no more relatable brand in the world or restaurant in the world than McDonald’s,” he said. 

Americans, he says, make the incorrect assumption that if you’ve seen one McDonald’s, you’ve seen them all. 

But in reality, he says McDonald’s caters to different culinary cultures. There’s McPoutine in Canada, McSpaghetti in the Philippines, McAloo Tikki in India, and the McBaguette in France, just to name a few. 

“I think a lot of people say, yeah, when I’m overseas I want to try the local food. Well, that’s kind of the point of the book, right? That this is local food,” He said.

“Without these very localized menu items — some of these rice dishes, macaroni dishes, or what have you — around the world, [McDonald’s] would not have been able to survive and thrive the way they have. I mean, they’re the largest for a reason.”

‘Starbucksing’ and other globetrotting adventures

Alex C. Park, a California-based journalist who has written extensively about the global fast food industry, recently argued in the New York Times that fast food is the best way to have a truly authentic local dining experience when travelling. 

“Often, you know, when we kind of go very deliberately looking for that kind of authentic experience, we end up at a place that we’re kind of surrounded by people like ourselves,” Park told CBC.

But at a Dairy Queen or a Tim Hortons, he says, it’s local people living their everyday lives.

“There isn’t this kind of a performance element. It is kind of a place that is by and of that country, as strange as that sounds,” Park said.

There are other globetrotters who take He’s and Park’s approach —  YouTubers who travel the world trying different McDonald’s menu items, and travel blogs that review KFC locations around the world. 

One blogger who goes by the name Winter documents his mission to visit every Starbucks in the world —  a pursuit he calls Starbucksing. He claims to have visited more than 15,000 in the U.S. and Canada, and another 5,000 overseas.

Winter argues the coffee chain is usually located where people people live and work. So what better way to really see a place as it is?

Tourists, especially from the U.S. and Canada, have a fantasy about what life is like in other parts of the world that doesn’t hold up to reality, Park says.

“I think that it’s too easy to start exoticizing people in foreign countries and kind of thinking they have different wants and desires from us,” he said. 

“Not everything about, like, everyday life in [another] country is kind of exciting and fun and interesting and different and there for our amusement. Sometimes it’s just kind of prosaic and ordinary in a way that is maybe recognizable to us.”

The costs of globalization 

While Park says fast food can show us what we all have in common, that doesn’t mean it’s all sunshine and roses.

He has concerns about global capitalism creating a monoculture, and the way the rise of global fast food affects local economies and environments.

Brazil, for example, has become the world’s largest producer of soybeans, at great environmental cost, all so that it can supply massive poultry, pork and beef farms in Europe and Asia.

“I certainly don’t mean to glorify fast food,” he said. 

Still, Park says countless people in different countries he’s visited have told him that eating in fast food chains makes them feel connected to the world, allowing them to step outside the local cuisine that tourists seek out with enthusiasm, but which is mundane and normal for them. 

For He, working on McAtlas has taken him to some truly unexpected — and even magical — places. One memory that stands out was his December trip to the McSki, billed as the world’s only ski-thru, at the Lindsvall ski resort in Sweden. 

“The snow was still fresh. It was like crunching on the ground, and you had to ski to a window,” he said. “I really love that one.”

Then there’s the McDonald’s nestled in a Japanese tea garden in Singapore. 

“It will be the most peaceful McDonald’s meal that you’ll ever have in your life, you know, watching this koi pond with fish and turtles swimming around while you’re eating a McSpicy sandwich.”

Asked about his experience trying a McPoutine in Canada, He hesitated.

“Let’s just say it’s adequate,” he said. “I don’t want to say anything to make my friends up north dislike me.”