A nice McD's graphic from FB

[Whovian]

[MattBaggins]

1. How is it not biodegradable

[Whovian]

2. See link

http://www.bihartimes.in/Maneka/Real_foods_spoil_very_quicklY,_fast_foods_not.html

What do Egyptian mummies and Mcdonald’s Happy Meals have in common? Both refuse to decompose, judging by an experiment by New York artist Sally Davies who, in April 2010, bought a McDonald’s Happy Meal (MHM) and has since left it in her kitchen. Week after week she has taken and put pictures of the MHM on the net. Over six months later, the MHM has yet to even grow mouldy! ‘The only change that I can see,’ she records, ‘ is that it has become hard as a rock, plastic to the touch and has an acrylic feel’.

The media are startled at the results. Yet the health industry has known for years that junk food from fast food chains doesn’t decompose. Len Foley’s ‘Bionic Burger’ features a Big Mac bought in 1989 that has not decomposed over two decades. The buyer has a museum of undecomposed burgers in his basement. (http//

…)

Joan Bruso, author of ‘Baby Bites-- Transforming a Picky Eater into a Healthy Eater’, has been blogging the life of a MHM that she bought a year ago, " My Happy Meal is one year old today and it looks pretty good. It NEVER smelled bad. It did NOT decompose. It did NOT get mouldy. This morning, I took its birthday photo".

[MattBaggins]

10. You could do that with all sorts of foods

Dry things out and they don't decompose.... Wow who knew?

[Confusious]

3. I second that ^

How is not biodegradable?

It's just the crap parts of the chicken, cow or pig.

Unless we have Styrofoam chickens, cows and pigs now.

I think I'll need some salt for that.

[Whovian]

4. How's about a touch of malathion in your burger?

Have you ever looked at the stuff they put in the cows and burgers from where they come?

[Confusious]

5. Well, after looking up the reasons

It's not the chemicals, it the high fat and low moisture, plus a shit load of salt.

Mummies are how they are because of salt.

My mother would keep bacon grease, it never molded or got rancid.

My grandmother did the same thing. And she did it before all the chemicals in the food.


You're looking in the wrong place.

[Whovian]

7. I'll halfway disagree.

Yes, the high fat content has a lot to do with the unhealthiness of many fast foods. Actually the Egyptians used natron rather than salt. Similar but not salt. But when even the bread doesn't mold in years passing there are chemicals at play here.

[Confusious]

9. If you had read down below, it does mold

Again, moisture content has a lot to do with it.

Natron is a sodium compound, and therefore a salt in chemistry.
(Usually, anything that is sodium-something or potassium-something is classified as a salt)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_%28chemistry%29

[tkmorris]

6. That's just plain bad science

Here's some good science which explains why the McDonald's burger seemingly doesn't rot. Hint: It isn't because it isn't biodegradable nor because it has a ton of salt.

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisiting-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-burger-testing-results.html?ref=obinsite

[tammywammy]

12. Thanks for the link

Very interesting.

[Whovian]

8. Window cleaning chemical injected into fast food hamburger meat

http://www.naturalnews.com/027872_ammonia_beef_products.html

(NaturalNews) If you're in the beef business, what do you do with all the extra cow parts and trimmings that have traditionally been sold off for use in pet food? You scrape them together into a pink mass, inject them with a chemical to kill the e.coli, and sell them to fast food restaurants to make into hamburgers.

That's what's been happening all across the USA with beef sold to McDonald's, Burger King, school lunches and other fast food restaurants, according to a New York Times article. The beef is injected with ammonia, a chemical commonly used in glass cleaning and window cleaning products.

This is all fine with the USDA, which endorses the procedure as a way to make the hamburger beef "safe" enough to eat. Ammonia kills e.coli, you see, and the USDA doesn't seem to be concerned with the fact that people are eating ammonia in their hamburgers.

[MattBaggins]

11. Boogey man with "used in cleaning products"

Water is traditionally used in cleaning products so I guess I better stop drinking that.

No more vinegar.

Better stay away from cheese and chocolate if your afraid of ammonium.

[Whovian]

13. Amonia. Tasty, heh?

[MattBaggins]

14. I like the taste of a well ripened brie cheese

some people do not. I also love a good salamis and other sausages and chocolate and pudding and gelatin and 100 other foods that need pH controlled during processing.

I know NaCl is an OK salt but people are afraid of NH3Cl simply because it smells funny in an aqueous solution.

NH3OH, NaOH, KOH, LiOH... NH3 is the safest of the bunch for raising pH.