Thursday, March 18, 2010

Happy Meal Half-Life

If you leave food on the counter, or somehow exposed, the best predictions would assure us that that food will rot. How long it takes may vary. But the long and the short of exposed food is that it will rot. Simple wisdom.

How complicated things must get then, when that wisdom is confounded by McDonald's Happy Meal. Author Nonna Joann Bruso has been keeping an online journal about the half-life of the Happy Meal. So far, a year has gone by, and the meal has shown no signs of rot, moulding, or decay.

My Conclusion: Food that doesn't break down is not actually food. The infamous Happy Meal may be one of North America's most gleefully recognised packages, but if it defies natural order, it is a paragon of sickness, uselessness, and a plague more than a food. The FDA really ought to have pseudo-foods like this incinerated. Permanently. McDonald's may have the golden arches, but it is inescapably obvious that "all that glitters is not [actually] gold."

*Thanks to the lads at BoingBoing for tipping me off to Bruso's experiment.
*

3 comments:

Randy said...

I have seen similar before, maybe the same. I seem to remember the lady had McD fries for five years though with no signs of aging other then hardening.
Amazing what science can do. Oh and Ick.

Randy said...

Supersize me! That is where I saw the ageless happy meal.

Unknown said...

Randy,

Yep. Supersize Me was a true horror movie. I think I spent most of that movie covering my eyes; it was just so horribly disgusting.

I'm glad he made that documentary, however. I'm hoping some people have wised-up.