Where are LatAm's 2.5K McDonald's Located?
LatAm's McDonald's density correlates with obesity; Brazil leads in locations, but other nations have more per capita.
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What do Bolivia, Cuba, and Haiti have in common? They stand together as the only 3 Latin American countries where McDonald's is absent.
Actually, Cuba has a single location, but it's technically under US jurisdiction in their Guantanamo Bay military base and not open to Cubans. That alone says a lot about the reach of the burger empire.
The famous golden arches have shone in the rest of the region for decades, with the first location opening in Puerto Rico in 1967 and Costa Rica three years later.
Nowadays, Brazil is home to over a thousand franchises. But sheer volume doesn't tell the whole picture. To measure Latin Americans' affinity for Happy Meals and French fries, we must look at the density — how many McDonald's locations are there per million people?
Puerto Rico, a US territory, has the highest density, with almost 30 locations for every million people. Panama, another country closely tied to the US (with a dollarized economy since 1904), is the runner-up.
With the drive-thru giant being so widespread across the region, it's safe to say that most readers have experienced its fast food offerings. But as usual, it's not all fun and games. McDonald's has been criticized for, among other things, the nutritional content of its food (or lack thereof), and eating it in excess is indisputably bad for health.
Given the chain's massive adoption regionally and globally, the question then arises: Are countries with higher McDonald's densities more obese?
The results are...inconclusive. There is some correlation — Puerto Rico has the highest prevalence of obesity and McDonald's density simultaneously, and the US, birthplace of Mickey D's, is an outlier in both metrics.
But there are countries such as Mexico and Nicaragua, which have relatively low density and high obesity rates, that break the trend. Looking outside Latin America, we see further cases that diverge from the "more McDonald's = more obesity" narrative: France and Japan have a higher density than all but Puerto Rico, and yet, their obesity levels are far lower than any country in our region. Quality and freshness standards also vary country to country, as does moderation, factors not measured here.
As is often the case with nutritional health, there is no one answer. For McDonald's lovers, this is good news — just point to France next time someone criticizes your fast food affliction. For McDonald's haters, well, you'll just have to find other grounds on which to criticize the company.
