Become the owner of your very own immortal hamburger

[Cain]

http://blog.friendseat.com/do-mcdonalds-burgers-decay/

Our intrigue regarding the eternal shelf life of a McDonald's hamburger began after reading of New York photographer Sally Davies' exploits involving a Happy Meal Project: Davies purchased a Happy Meal, and perched the McDonald's hamburger and french fries on a table. As an experiment, she photographed the meal every few days to measure the rate of spoilage. Her photographs revealed that after 145 days, the burger and fries appeared as fresh as the day they were purchased from McDonald's nearly 5 months ago.

Our interest was really peaked when we discovered that several other concerned consumers had conducted similar McDonald's burger experiments. In these experiments, none of the McDonald's hamburgers decomposed after extended periods of time raging from 1 year to over a decade. Nutrition consultant Karen Hanrahan kept a McDonald's hamburger for, get this, 12 years. She purchased the McDonald's hamburger in 1996 and posted her claim on her website in 2008.

Author and obesity activist Julia Havey stored a McDonald's cheeseburger and fries for 4 years, and Joann Bruso, a 62-year-old grandmother, held on to a McDonald's Happy Meal for a whole year. All of these events were either videotaped or photographed. To illustrate what real food looks like when it spoils, Julia Havey's video visually compares pristine looking four-year old McDonald's french fries with a regular decomposed potato.

Then there's Leo Foley's Bionic Burger video. Foley has allegedly been saving McDonald's hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and Big Macs from McDonald's for over 19 years, and "they look EXACTLY the same!" says Foley. "These hamburgers are not food substances (the way we normally think of food), says Foley, "they are chemical concoctions that contain the look, taste, and smell of food but don't be fooled. There is nothing 'food-like' about these substances at all."

[Nephew Twiddleton]

But they're so tasty!

That is pretty disturbing though.

[Don Coyote]

I believe this should be investigated by people without an agenda to prove how bad fast food is. ON top of that, if your body is metabolizing the chemical concoction then it might has be labeled food.

[The Johnny]

BURGER IS FOUNTAN OF YOUTH, MUST HAS
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[Nephew Twiddleton]

I believe this should be investigated by people without an agenda to prove how bad fast food is. ON top of that, if your body is metabolizing the chemical concoction then it might has be labeled food.

Naturally you would say that. You're part of the military-industrial-pharmaceutical-junk food complex.  

[Don Coyote]

I believe this should be investigated by people without an agenda to prove how bad fast food is. ON top of that, if your body is metabolizing the chemical concoction then it might has be labeled food.

Naturally you would say that. You're part of the military-industrial-pharmaceutical-junk food complex.  

You have no idea how close to the truth that could have been.

[Jasper]

I don't see how the stale burger lady could have skewed the results, assuming the pictures aren't intentional forgeries.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

In other news, the mummification of my bowels is coming along nicely. Thanks McDonald's!

[Rumckle]

I don't see how the stale burger lady could have skewed the results, assuming the pictures aren't intentional forgeries.

I guess it she could have stored it in certain ways, treated it with something before hand, or something similar.

[Triple Zero]

Well, I don't know about burgers, but I can totally imagine fries to keep looking exactly the same when kept in relatively dry conditions.

Any kinds of fries, not just McDonald's.

When they're fried, they are heated up, sterilizing the insides, the water inside boils, pushing out bubbles of steam in the frying fat, this is what makes them crispy on the outside and why you should shake off the fat asap when you take them out cause otherwise the fat soaks back into the fries and they get soggy.

So on the outside, they are dry, the remains of fat probably solidify, sealing the outside further close.

Additionally they're salted.

It's just not really a place for micro-organisms to do their thing.

[East Coast Hustle]

take it from me, real french fries get pretty nasty and moldy after a few weeks at room temperature.

[East Coast Hustle]

also, this makes me really glad that I have, for about 15 years now, refused to eat anything from McDonald's unless I was absolutely starving and it was the only option for food in a 20+ mile radius.

[Triple Zero]

I think I got something like 8 years or something, minus one big mac menu after a really long roadtrip back home from a week long festival when everybody was really short-tempered and I figured it might be better not to push the issue any further and convince them to look for some random other place to eat. Even though were in the middle of fucking Germany, where you can get off the road anywhere, enter some little village and eat delicious schweinbraten mit sauerkraut und knoedel for under 10 euros. There was an icky oily taste in my mouth for the rest of the night, it was horrible. Plus I made the mistake of opening up the plastic cap from my cup of cola

[Cain]

also, this makes me really glad that I have, for about 15 years now, refused to eat anything from McDonald's unless I was absolutely starving and it was the only option for food in a 20+ mile radius.

This.  I rarely ever went to them before, but I got food poisoning from a McDonalds when I was 14 and since then, the only time I've got to a McDonalds was July this year, and that was only because I didn't know the town in question and it made the kids with me quiet.

Admittedly I did once or twice go to a Burger King while working at the airport, which was almost certainly no better, but as a rule I'd prefer to make my own burgers, as they're healthier, cheaper and tastier.  And it's not like making a burger is difficult or anything.

[Freeky]

I never liked the burgers anyway. I preferred the chicken nuggets, though when I found bits of stuff (garbage stuff) in one order, I rather lost my taste for them.