the Eternal McD

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 piqued 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.

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