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Forums - General - McDonald's Happy Meal left on shelf for 6 months - see what happens.

Hephaestos on 13 October 2010
Gilgamesh said:

My 12 year old MacDonalds burger pwns your 6 month old burger :P


19yrold Burger collection beats all

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYyDXH1amic&feature=player_embedded



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greenmedic88 on 13 October 2010
dallas said:
greenmedic88 said:
dallas said:
piggychan said:

so basically if u eat macdonalds you don't decompose !! must get a big mac meal!!!


fake story.  McD's doesn't have any more preservative in foods than anything else.  The bun doesn't even look dried out, either.  Something tells me that she's making 5 trips to mcdonalds every week...

I'll say true.

Does it even need to be said what a complete waste of time, effort and money it would be to go to McDonald's several times a week just to pick up hamburgers not for the purpose of eating, but to take pictures of them to post on the web?

If there's any chicanery in this "story" it might be that she intentially dried the food out. It looked like there were no condiments on the hamburger which by default come with ketchup, mustard, pickles and reconstituted onions which would provide enough moisture to allow bacteria and or mold to grow.

Without them, the salted burger patty would probably just turn into jerky. The bun probably has the same perservatives that would be found in something like Wonder Bread, which probably doesn't mold either if dried out. Dried bread crumbs/croutons don't grow mold either.

have you seen the picture?  the burger looks fresh, not days/weeks old 

 

no motivation for doing this?  pfft.  People do all kinds of useless and dangerous things for attention these days, why not something more benign like a perpetually "fresh" burger?

If it dried out fast enough it will look preserved. And as long as it stays dried out, it will will stay that way for years.

This pretty much applies to any food; foods with less moisture and more salt or oils in them to displace moisture tend to preserve much better.

I have a McDonald's hamburger (bun and meat paddy only) and fries sitting on my shelf as I'm typing this. The bun is drying out like a crouton and the meat paddy is turning into jerky. I'm willing to bet that if it continues to dry out by the end of the week, it's probaby going to look almost exactly the same months later.



greenmedic88 on 13 October 2010
HappySqurriel said:

Where I live it is so dry that most foods left on the counter wouldn't decompose in the way people from other parts of the world would expect.  If you notice, the burger doesn't have any condiments or toppings on it; and with how thin the burger and bun are it would probably dry out within a couple of days in most non-humid environments. Once dried out decomposition (effectively) stops and food can (for all practically purposes) last "forever" once dehydrated.

On top of that many "normal" foods (like Honey or Christmas Cake) have qualities that make them resistant to mold and bacterial growth, and will last decades before going bad. The fact that this burger lasts so long is not (necessarily) an indicator that it is bad for you.

If you lived in an arid desert, then any food that didn't spoil due to high heat and began with low amounts of moisture in it would probably preserve quite nicely.

The "meat and bun" special order burger definitely played a key part in the preservation process.

McDonald's burgers (the regular paddies) are so thin and salted that they dry out like jerky. I would guess that if it had all the regular stuff (ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles) it would likely be a decomposing mess by the end of the week unless the conditions were just right to allow everything to dry out before any fungus, mold, or bacteria had the opportunity to cultivate.

My McDonald's burger may not fare as well since I live in a metro city on the coast (San Francisco) where it's rarely arid dry and I've noticed that mold tends to grow relatively fast in the bathroom due to the native conditions. I think the fries will turn into potato chips though. Thin cut, saturated with grease and heavily salted. The burger paddy is probably the only thing that could mold if it doesn't dry out fast enough.

Honey is actually pretty interesting; it's supposedly the one food stuff that stored properly, will last virtually forever.

I think pound cake is another foodstuff that will resist mold and bacterial growth due to the high amounts of sugar and low amount of moisture.



greenmedic88 on 13 October 2010

Two week McDonald's and Burger King (Hungry Jacks) experiment from a guy in Australia.

For his experiment, he ordered the happy meals and just let them sit unwrapped in their boxes for two weeks. The cheeseburgers (with ketchup/mustard) still had moisture in them and as a result, they both had fair amounts of mold growing on them.

No surprise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg_CB_HMzXw

at 4 weeks they were both pretty bad. Health hazard bad. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1XgAbhwUps&NR=1

It's fair to assume that anyone with a burger that lasted over a week with no mold (due to drying out) probably bought it somewhere dry or stored it under conditions that allowed the burger to dry out (no condiments, maybe laid out separately to prevent moisture from being trapped between the meat and bun).



SnesTea on 13 October 2010

I would eat thats. I once ate a 3 month old cookie.