To Heat and Serve

Hamburger giant McDonald’s has changed America, sociologists say. The chain’s 25,000 restaurants pride themselves on the consistency of their food no matter where it is served, but that has made it “harder to tell where the Midwest ends and the South begins,” they say, and the sheer number of McDonald’s stores has forced traditional diners out of business. “These small restaurants cannot survive” in the face of competition from McDonald’s, says Chicago’s Northwestern University sociology professor Gary Fine. Though, he says, “to be honest, those little restaurants didn’t serve very good food. We romanticize them but that’s the truth.” (UPI) ...So really, then, nothing has changed at all.