Everything’s bigger in America. We’ve got the biggest cars, the biggest houses, the biggest companies, the biggest food, and finally: the biggest people.
Morgan Spurlock, Super Size Me (2004 film)
American-based fast food restaurant chain McDonald’s has become one of the symbolic institutions of globalisation. The company is now active in around 120 countries and runs more than 35,000 outlets around the world. If seen as an icon of globalisation, then the distribution of restaurants also is an indicator for the underlying global inequalities: Europe and North America dominate the global picture, while especially China has grown considerably ever since in 1990 the first outlet opened. Seven countries have seen the company disappear from their market again (Barbados, Bermuda, Iceland, Iran, Jamaica, and Macedonia).
