It’s bad enough that McDonald’s would seek to water down Italy’s vaunted food culture by introducing a line of “McItaly” burgers, Matthew Fort snorts, but that the morally bankrupt government of Silvio Berlusconi would give a stamp of approval is a “monstrous act of national betrayal.” The menu additions basically add artichoke spread and Asiago cheese to old standbys, he writes for the Guardian—“the kind of global mind-numbing sameness and taste bud-mugging mediocrity that McDonald’s embodies.”
“No one in their right mind can see McDonald’s as either a force for good in the world or as representing the sunny uplands of gastronomy,” Fort’s rant continues, particularly when it comes to Italy, whose culinary “pleasure lies in diversity, not homogeneity.” He concludes huffily: “It does not bode well for the healthy survival of Italy’s extraordinarily diverse food culture that the government should be seen to be embracing its very antithesis with such unbridled enthusiasm.”
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