McSalad? We don't give a toss

Present Tense:In 1999, a bright spark in McDonald's product development division had a fine idea. It would sell salad in a container that would fit just perfectly into a car's cupholder. The Salad McShaker would be healthy eating on the go. But customers soon noticed one minor, yet vital, flaw. Despite millions of years of evolution, humans had utterly failed to develop the ability to drive a car and eat a salad at the same time.

In 2006, McDonalds introduced another new item on its American menus. The Snack Wrap was tested and re-tested until what emerged was a tortilla that is the perfect width to eat single-handedly while driving. And the consistency of the sauce is perfectly calibrated so that it won't drip on your pants while you do this. Given several aeons, nature itself couldn't have designed a better Snack Wrap.

The success of this non-drip, non-crash hunk of grease and calories is among the reasons McDonald's global sales are at a 30-year high - only a short time after many wondered if the golden arches were on the verge of collapse.

In 2002, the company suffered its first quarterly loss in its history and its stock dropped 56 per cent in just 10 months. It was the time of Fast Food Nationand the McLibel trial, and a growing perception of McDonald's as the epitome of all that is bad about modern food and food production; of a vile culture of consumption and disposability; an obesity epidemic; and of unthinking corporations targeting our children.

McDonald's had hamburgled our culture, and the alarm had finally gone off.

And yet, from that low point it went on a roll. Sales are up in the US, Asia and, gradually, in Europe. And the major part of its resurgence has not been the salads, or little bags of fruit, or because the McCafé on Grafton Street acts as a walnut-panelled fig leaf for the greasy-fingered reality of the restaurant behind it. It's bouncing back because people still love burgers.

There are accompanying factors. It has arrested its virus-like growth around the world. (Although it will still open a store somewhere in the world every day of this year.) In the US it's adding customers through opening 40 per cent of its stores 24 hours a day. It sells a quarter of all that country's fast-food breakfasts, making the Egg McMuffin - with its egg that looks like it's been laid by a squashed chicken - an unerringly integral part of the American morning diet.

It has benefited from a resurgent US economy, because more people at work means less people eating at home. And it has also pushed what we know as the Eurosaver menu, and which is called the Dollar menu in the US. It might not always be good food, but it's at better prices.

You'll need the extra change for the snack dispenser in the cardiac ward.

But mostly, it has realised that man cannot live on salad alone. In fact, salad sales have dropped over the last two years and in the UK the company's attempt to re-market itself as health-conscious has been blamed for its inconsistent performance there.

"I think we had allowed a belief to grow that we were going to morph our way into a health food shop," said its UK chief executive. "That was never going to happen. We are proud of core McDonald's. The burger business is at our heart."

The salads have served a purpose, though. They "cast a favourable glow over our brand and the rest of our menu", explained McDonald's chief financial officer back in 2004. In other words, throwing a bit of greenery about the place made it look like much less of a junkyard.

Burger King - which has avoided much of the flak fired at its great rival - is also having a pretty good time. As with McDonald's, its profits have jumped in Ireland. And with that has come cockiness. It has proclaimed that "there is life in the burger", and announced internal research which, it claims, says that people are fed up with being told what to eat and where to eat it. It should hope so, because Britain is introducing a ban on the advertising of junk food to children and Burger King, which previously spent about £3 million (€4.5 million) a year trying to entice British kids, will no longer be allowed tell anyone under 16 what to eat and where to eat it.

But those who still find their way into the restaurant will have the option of the recently-added Double Whopper meal which, at an average 1,500 calories, isn't far short of the daily recommended intake, but which has all the salt needed and several grams of trans fats (the cigarette tar of fast food).

The introduction of this followed McDonald's super-sized World Cup burger, which weighed in at 40 per cent larger than the Big Mac.

Both burgers illustrate a new defiance among the chains, mirroring a US trend towards fatter, more filling burgers to cater for a hungrier, fatter population. Evolution may not have given us the ability to simultaneously eat lettuce and drive a car, but it has given us a deep craving for fat that has not yet been satiated.