Poor old Mickey D’s has long been a whipping boy for the anti-globalization crowd, something that reached a nadir with the trashing of a McDonald’s in southern France by self-proclaimed ‘peasant’ activist Jose Bove, an act that brought him plenty of approval amongst the usual suspects in Europe.

Here’s an alternative approach (reported in the London Times ) that actually recognizes that people can decide for themselves what to eat. It’s called competition

“After a five-year battle, the fast-food giant McDonald’s has retreated from a southern Italian town, defeated by the sheer wholesomeness of a local baker’s bread…Luigi Digesù, the baker, said that he had not set out to force McDonald’s to close down in any “bellicose spirit”. He had merely offered the 65,000 residents tasty filled panini — bread rolls — which they overwhelmingly preferred to hamburgers and chicken nuggets. “It is a question of free choice,” Signor Digesù said. “

Indeed it is.