These are golden days for McDonald's

John Travolta once noted that, in France, a quarter-pounder with cheese is known as a "royal with cheese", while the French call a Big Mac "le Big Mac" and let you to enjoy it with a glass of beer.

That's the "funniest thing" about Europe, he concludes during the famous scene in Pulp Fiction: Its people have accepted American culture without entirely selling their souls. "A lot of the same shit we got here, they got there. But there, they're just a little bit different."

Although environmentalists, nutritionists and left-wing activists love to hate McDonald's, its business is booming around the world. The UK, where profits collapsed in 2005, is now the most successful foreign market in the firm's history, with sales up £450 million (€523 million) in 2009.

Seventy years after Dick and Mac McDonald started selling burgers east of Los Angeles, the business they helped to create has become a global phenomenon. John Travolta would like the fact that each of the 124 countries with a McDonald's is now allowed to adapt the concept to its own culture. In Turkey, they sell kebabs but ban pork, while milkshakes aren't on the menu in Israel, since kosher law prevents dairy food being prepared in the same kitchen as meat. And in India, the land of the sacred cow, there's no beef on the menu.