The symbolic importance of the burger cannot be underestimated. (91) Under its beefburger guise, it was the first of the new range of “convenience” foods which were about to make the world a better place and begin the liberation of women from the drudgery of home-cooking and housework. The older generation did not approve, which made it all the better. In the Sixties the hamburger was a symbol of the techno age — perfectly circular and streamlined. It was as uniform and relentlessly predictable as only the latest technology could make it. (92) True, there were those who rebelled against it, but to most the hamburger was a reflection of the national love affair with Americana（美国文化）. It was a phenomenon which was made fresh in Seventies London with the trendy burgers of the Great American Disaster and the Hard Rock Café, and in many other cities round the world. In the Eighties another subtle shift occurred. People became aware that America was no longer another place but a culture which had spread throughout the world. And the hamburger became globalized, too, in the form of McDonald’s. With its US home market, like the fat in its burgers, heavily saturated, McDonald’s looked abroad. (93) By the end of the Eighties it had grown to such a size that every day 28 million global citizens ate there and the Big Mac became omnipresent. （94） McDonald’s stormed the world, but its successes also drew upon it in the Nineties the criticisms which were levelled at that era. (95) Food experts began to see the world’s changing culinary （烹调的） tastes as a symbol of what is wrong with the new consumerism. “The hamburger is a metaphor for our times — cheap, convenient and an indication that we have given up any real interest in what we eat,” said the leading food writer Frances Bissell, lamenting the trends of our increasingly obese society towards snacking on the hoof or before the TV instead of eating proper meals. Then along came “Mad Cow Disease” and even though the average person was told they had more chance of winning the National Lottery than contracting “Mad Person Disease”, with it came the dreadful realization that the cheap, convenient, easy way out might, in the end, turn out to be none of these things.