McDonald's Survey

The weather the last few days has been really nice, so much so that even have exposed my nobbly knees to the world. We’ve got a lot of work done clearing the rapidly encroaching herbage in bothe Arcola and Villa with the strimmer. Today James and Alison from Northampton arrived in Italy again and predictably… with them the rains came back. Mind you I’m not complaining; the things we have sown and planted could do with a bit of a soaking.

On my fears of McDonald’s arriving, Susan did a survey amongst her kids at the school, to see how imminent the danger of the end of the Italian food culture is. The results were quite encouraging. The food of La Mamma is still very much the favourite. Most liked to cook themselves, especially the girls and most were concerned about eating healthily, again more so the girls. It looks like traditional roles of the girls doing the cooking still seem to exist. Whilst most had eaten at McDonald’s before and liked it, there is a significant percentage that does not intend to eat at all there, whilst more than half only intend to eat there occasionally. On the subject of previous visits, significantly more girls than boys have never been before, reinforcing the notion that Italian boys tend to be spoiled. Have a look at the full results. I would welcome comments.

Total Surveyed: 177 aged 13-15 years


Favourite Foods:
40.9% pizza
17.3% pasta (including spaghetti with various sauces)
11.4% chips
11% Lasagna
Only one person named McDonald’s

Which in your opinion is the best cuisine?
91% Italian
3.7% American

Where do you like to eat most?
69% prefer the cooking of “La Mamma”, eating at home.
1.1% prefer Granny’s cooking and one person likes to eat with friends
The remainder prefer to eat out with 17.4% naming various “Trattorie” or “Pizzerie”
2.7% named McDonald’s as their favourite place to eat.
The rest was a mixture of Mexican restaurants, Asian restaurants, French Restaurant and a Four Star restaurant(don’t we all…)

Do you like to cook yourself?
Total: 70.6% do cook
Boys: 55.7% do cook
Girls: 85.9% like to cook

What do you cook?
Most mentioned was pasta (23.5%). Second came cake (19.7%), although mostly by girls. Pizza was third with 15.8%. 9.3% had no preference or liked to cook “everything”. Other dishes mentioned were, rice, egg dishes, meat, hamburgers, hot dogs, desserts, fish, chips, crepes, couscous, salad, soup vegetables, toast and Croc Madame.

Were you aware, that a McDonald’s is about to open in Sarzana?
89.8% were aware of the new Mc Donald’s


Have you ever eaten in McDonald’s? if yes, how often?
13.1% never
42.6% once or twice
33.5% 3-10 times
10.8% more often
Boys:
5.1% never
45.6% once or twice
39.2% 3-10 times
10.1% more often
Girls:
18.7% never
40.7% once or twice
28.6% 3-10 times
12.1% more often

Did you like the food?
91.5% of those who had been to McDonald’s liked the food.

Now that there is going to be a McDonald’s in Sarzana, how often do you think you will eat there?
17% never
59.1% occasionally
14.2% once a month
6.8% once a week
2.9% more often
No significant difference between boys and girls.

Is eating a well balanced, healthy diet important to you?
67.4% answered yes, 14.3% no and 18.3% weren’t sure.
Boys:
Only 48% of boys answered yes, 26.6% no and 25.3 weren’t sure
Girls:
85.9% of girls though a healthy diet is important, 3.3% did not thinks so and 10.9% weren’t sure.

Collapse of Civilisation

Civilisation as we know it has just collapsed. The curse of modern civilisation, McDonald’s, has just arrived in Sarzana. I had been so happy that kids in this country still ate real food and knew what it was. Now… the future looks bleak. No doubt now Italian kids, like their equivalents the western world over, will succumb to the temptations of artificial food and become big fat blobs! There is still the hope that a repeat of Benevento is going to happen in Sarzana. When we visited a winery near this provincial town in Campania, the 17 year old brother of the cantina took us on a guided tour. When we passed a wrecked building, he informed us, that it used to be a McDonald’s, however they had closed permanently after having had their windows smashed repeatedly and generally proved unpopular. Somehow I don’t think the Northern Italians quite have that revolutionary spirit any more. Maybe I’m going to have to start an anti-McDonald’s campaign myself.

The weather forecast has been rather capricious recently, i.e. totally unreliable. Yesterday it was supposed to be sunny and it rained heavily in the afternoon. Today it was supposed to be mixed and it was beautifully sunny, albeit with a cool easterly wind. The next few days are forecast to be fine, so we’ll see what’s happening. We planted a few things out in Arcola today: strawberries (the plants were on special offer), courgettes, cucumbers and red and yellow peppers. I hope it’s not too early for the peppers. In the afternoon we were trying to buy a motor plough, however the plough we had recently spotted at our local hypermarket was sold out. So we went in search for something else affordable. I had seen, what I thought was a second hand plough outside a hardware store. So we went and asked how much that second hand plough was. The chap in the shop insisted it was new and wanted €450. It was the same model as the one we saw in the supermarket for €300 and it had various scuffs and wasn’t clean. He must have thought I was born yesterday, or maybe he heard the foreign accent and tried to get one over on me. Well we are going to have another hunt tomorrow. We really need to turn some soil to plant our spuds. Failing this we’re going to have to dig the old fashioned way again.