And This is What People Eat

I don't usually re-post news stories or blog links in place of my own posts, but this one deserves to be here since I spend so much mental energy considering the food that my family eats.

As if I needed another reason to not eat fast food, ever, The Consumerist posted this article yesterday.

Have you ever wondered what a McDonald's Happy Meal looks like after it's sat on a shelf (not in a freezer) for a year? This seems like one of those things I would learn accidentally, but writer Nonna Joann Bruso decided to find out on purpose.

The results? Not as disgusting as you might think, which itself is sort of disgusting.


She wrote:

“
It smelled delicious for a few days. I’d get a whiff of those yummy French fries every time I walked into my office. After a week or so, you could hardly smell it. My husband worried that when the food began to decompose, there would be a terrible odor in our home. He also worried the food would attract ants and mice. He questioned my sanity.

NOPE, no worries at all. My Happy Meal is one year old today and it looks pretty good. It NEVER smelled bad. The food did NOT decompose. It did NOT get moldy, at all.
”

The pitiful, slightly pained expression on the Littlest Pet Shop dog included with the meal says it all.

One of the commenters references Michael Pollan, my personal favorite food philosopher. One of his cardinal rules of eating is that you shouldn't eat anything that won't eventually decompose (honey excluded). Click over here for an even better experiment - a 12 year old hamburger.