McDonald - The Arthur Page Society

Introduction
From humble beginnings of only three restaurants in 1955, McDonald’s® has
grown to be a powerful multinational corporation with more than 31,000 restaurants in
119 countries. 1 McDonald’s employs more than 1.5 million people and serves more than
46 million customers per day. 2 McDonald’s Corporation has long held the number one
ranking in the fast food industry 3 (See Appendix 1). Across industries, McDonald’s
restaurants rank in the top three American brands 4 (See Appendix 2).
Being a major corporate force does not come without its drawbacks. By virtue of
its leadership position, McDonald’s is also the global fast food industry’s biggest target. 5
One issue in particular—that of increasing obesity rates and health risks caused by diets
high in fat and sugar—has been critical for McDonald’s. The corporation took its first
major hit on this issue in the highly publicized “McLibel” suit in England in the mid
1990s. That court case came about as a result of protestors distributing pamphlets titled
“What’s Wrong with McDonald’s: What They Don’t Want You to Know” that included
numerous criticisms that McDonald’s charged were libelous. An unflattering
documentary based on this case, entitled McLibel, was released in 2005 6 )
In 2001, Eric Schlosser published a scathing criticism of fast food in his New York
Times bestseller book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. A
fictionalized account of this book was released as a motion picture of the same name in
November, 2006 7 . Schlosser has also published a version of Fast Food Nation, designed
specifically for 11- to 15-year-old children and entitled Chew on This,. Attacks on
McDonald’s nutrition and health impacts continued in 2002 when two American
teenagers filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s claming that the corporation was
4