Immortal Hamburger

Chlidonias

Chlidonias

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photo of said burger on the link
Mc Old burger: still intact after 14 years
When David Whippie bought a burger from McDonald's in 1999, he decided to keep it for a month and see how it lasted. Fast forward 14 years and the burger is looking as good as new.

"I was showing some people how enzymes work and I thought a hamburger would be a good idea. And I used it for a month and then I forgot about it," the man from Utah told a US TV show, in the video above.

"It ended up in a paper sack in the original sack with the receipt in my coat pocket tossed in the back of my truck and it sat there for two or three months."

After his wife packed his coat away — with the hamburger in pocket — he forgot about it.

"My wife didn't discover it until at least a year or two after that," Whippie told TV show The Doctors.

"And we pulled it out and said, 'Oh my gosh. I can't believe it looks the same way.'"

He decided to keep it to show his grandkids and 14 years later the burger still has no signs of mould, fungus or odour. The only thing that disintegrated was the pickle.

"It's great for my grandkids to see what happens with fast food," Whippie said.

While stories like this might make some people swear off preservative-packed fast food, Lorraine Belanger, spokesperson for Food Standards Australian and New Zealand, told MSN NZ it doesn't mean there are safety issues.

"If you store it in a particular place, lots and lots of foods will stay looking fairly intact," she said.

"I've heard stories of burgers being found whole in rubbish dumps, but there could be a whole range of reasons for that, related to being buried underground and being in a cold, dark place where it's not exposed to air."

Belanger said foods in New Zealand and Australia go through rigorous testing and that any preservatives used are harmless to our health.

"The human body is an amazing system that breaks down food very efficiently and processes it," she said

"We wouldn't want to be eating McDonald's every day from a health perspective, but there are no safety concerns about eating it."
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So this guy left a coat in his truck for a couple months, and his wife packed it away thereafter without checking the pockets, but they are worried about preservatives? :D How about common hygiene instead of living in squalor?
 
nanoboy said:
So this guy left a coat in his truck for a couple months, and his wife packed it away thereafter without checking the pockets, but they are worried about preservatives? :D How about common hygiene instead of living in squalor?
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It makes you think of Cletus the slack-jawed yokel doesn't it?

I must admit I don't actually believe this story overly much, but it makes for a good thread.

What I'm wondering is if he was using it to demonstrate how enzymes work...how was he actually doing this with an intact hamburger? Surely any experiments on enzymes would involve destroying the food item? I'm not a chemist or anything of course so what am I missing there?
 
Chlidonias said:
It makes you think of Cletus the slack-jawed yokel doesn't it?

I must admit I don't actually believe this story overly much, but it makes for a good thread.

What I'm wondering is if he was using it to demonstrate how enzymes work...how was he actually doing this with an intact hamburger? Surely any experiments on enzymes would involve destroying the food item? I'm not a chemist or anything of course so what am I missing there?
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He could have just showed it to the kids and explained how the enzymes were preserving the food.

~Thylo:cool:
 
There are many instances of people keeping immortal burgers. One I saw recently is kept by a doctor/lecturer from the TV show "The Doctors" as a prop in lectures. He is a paediatrician, I believe.
 
nanoboy said:
There are many instances of people keeping immortal burgers. One I saw recently is kept by a doctor/lecturer from the TV show "The Doctors" as a prop in lectures. He is a paediatrician, I believe.
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I think one of the dudes on that show is Dr. Phill's son or something.

~Thylo:cool:
 
article here about "the myth" of non-decomposing McDonalds burgers: The Burger Lab: Revisiting the Myth of The 12-Year Old McDonald's Burger That Just Won't Rot (Testing Results!) | A Hamburger Today

Basically it says it is due to the moisture content. Let it dry out and it will not decompose (essentially it becomes mummified). The article discusses tests with non-McDonalds burgers with the same results (i.e. the burgers aren't long-lasting because they are plastic McDonalds burgers: any burgers will do the same thing if kept dried).
 
Chlidonias said:
article here about "the myth" of non-decomposing McDonalds burgers: The Burger Lab: Revisiting the Myth of The 12-Year Old McDonald's Burger That Just Won't Rot (Testing Results!) | A Hamburger Today

Basically it says it is due to the moisture content. Let it dry out and it will not decompose (essentially it becomes mummified). The article discusses tests with non-McDonalds burgers with the same results (i.e. the burgers aren't long-lasting because they are plastic McDonalds burgers: any burgers will do the same thing if kept dried).
Click to expand...

I quite like the science, but I lament the wastage of some perfectly good burgers. Yum!
 
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