We cover hamburgers, chicken, veggie burgers, salads, we've got a pretty broad range. To me, McDonald's isn't only about the food. It's about the prices, it's about the way we eat.

Playtime and toys are good for kids, or they wouldn't buy them. McDonald's can provide that experience. And having dinner with the family is good for kids.

You then get into a period a few years ago, where a lot of external factors that we didn't have anything to do with did hit, and some of them at the same time... devaluations, weak economies, you name it, in various parts of the world.

So Europe's a big driver. And at one point, if the euro hadn't devalued, they would have been making as much money as the US with half the stores. Returns were higher.

McDonald's is almost 50 years old. For 47 years we had a pretty consistent track record of being able to deliver admirable sales.

You have got to have discipline and focus - on the customer and how you run the business.

I think this year we'll open up 900 gross, we're closing some, so the net count is lower, but the 900 are spread all over the place. Some of the closures are relocations, where you're moving it to another place in the marketplace.

When you're doing that you lose your focus on the discipline of the business, and how you train people at Hamburger University, and everybody gets on a bigger, different vision, and they're not on the same page.

I think we have a great track record on being relevant, on identifying consumer trends, needs and wants.

As I said, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about partner brands.

And so if your competitors aren't growing, if there isn't a competitive reason to grow, and you want focus and discipline to add customers to existing stores, you adjust your strategy.

But I tell you, I would really be interested if there was a partner we could take in, that could put them over here on the side, that would allow us full leverage and access down the road.

We cover hamburgers, chicken, veggie burgers, salads, we've got a pretty broad range. To me, McDonald's isn't only about the food. It's about the prices, it's about the way we eat.

Salads was a big indicator of that - there was a huge market out there for it. And why not tap it? Some of the things we are doing now around the globe are responding to customers. It's not because some guy sued you.

Every year we close 300-400 stores anyway, just relocations.

When you raise prices, you've got to make sure you get it to the bottom line. You can fritter it away because of the way you're running the business, with maybe not a totally disciplined approach.

I think we'll still be a family restaurant, we'll be contemporary, we'll be lifestyle, we won't be old, we won't be 60 years old in the view of the consumer.

But we had a pretty diversified portfolio of businesses around the world and things tended to offset each other. But one or two years ago, we had a lot of things happening at the same time.

The fact of the matter is, most of our orders are not supersized. Less than five per cent are supersized - that's never mentioned. The whole issue has been supersized itself.

And ours is a business that requires discipline and focus.

Ronald has had bicycle safety and safety in the home. Yes, Ronald is McDonald's, second most recognised figure after Santa Claus, and there's an element of obviously benefiting your business.

We have very specific rules about how we go to market with children, and I think they are very responsible.

The markets where we've got real good presence are the older, more mature markets like Australia, and Western Europe - where we've only got 6,000 stores, compared to the US with 13,000.

Some of the analysts were saying, Now you're a cash cow, there's no growth at all, pay it all out in dividends, give me it all, you can't invest wisely.

But, on balance, we seized the marketplace. We've got a great infrastructure. And yes it's struggling in some areas because of some external factors and some internal factors.

I talked about 12 to 18 months, and that's about reaffirming our foundation for sustained growth: getting the discipline back, getting the basics right, getting the customer focus back... so by the end of next year, I hope most of that's in place.

But you know the second month I was here I put out a healthy lifestyles directive. The pundits will say it was because we were sued. Well that's what they say. It was never about that.

But in terms of the code by which we go to market - it's not telling kids to supersize, we're not selling them, generally, products, in the advertising we do to them.

Because we only feed in the United States less than 1 per cent of the meals, most of them are eaten elsewhere. Most meals are eaten at home. So to make McDonald's the target is not going to solve the problem.

I'm working harder than ever now, and I'm putting on my pants the same as I always have. I just get up every day and try to do a little better than the day before, and that is to run a great restaurant with great food, great wine, and great service. That's my philosophy.

Food was a constant topic of conversation in our household.

Islands are known to differ in the food supply available to ground finches, mainly seeds.

I've always done food that can work in a set time frame. The message I'm trying to get across is, it doesn't have to take three days to do this. With planning, you can do a lot and really have quality food every day.

You know, nobody eats in England. Three or four pints of English beer a night fills you. I can't say I'm very impressed with the food in America. it's all sort of bland. Like turkey sandwiches.

Food simply isn't important to me.

It all comes back to the basics. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they'll keep coming back.

It is obvious that the greatest and most important service that is required of our agriculture under existing conditions is an enlarged production of the staple food crops.

Nothing to do but work, Nothing to eat but food, Nothing to wear out but clothes, To keep one from going nude.

We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day.

I've always preferred food be on the blander side.

The high food value of field beans and the shortage of supply due to the light yields of 1915 and 1916 render them of great importance in the regions to which they are adapted.

Mostly I enjoy the restaurants (my husband is a chef), though I wish we had a wider diversity of ethnic food.

You know the great irony is that people think you have to have money to enjoy fine food, which is a shame.

Unfortunately, the food industry has not yet faced this situation and begun taking measures to avoid exploiting our weakness for not knowing when we have had enough.

All my jobs have been with food in one way or another since 1948. My parents were in the hotel business, and I just loved the warm hearted people who worked so hard with such good humor.

Everyone would talk about their diets and working out and what it made me do was go to craft services where all the food for the cast and crew was and I would eat.

Italy in the first years got food, for the first year or the first periods got food. Then we got raw materials and then we got tool machines, let's say, instruments for working.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

I went from 118 pounds to 135 pounds in a few months. But, I still didn't know anything about food.