The Truth Is Out There

Came across this today on "The Upshot" Yahoo! blog...

Vladimir Lenin, King Tut and the McDonald's Happy Meal: What do they all have in common? A shocking resistance to Mother Nature's cycle of decomposition and biodegradability, apparently.

That's the disturbing point brought home by the latest project of New York City-based artist and photographer Sally Davies, who bought a McDonald's Happy Meal back in April and left it out in her kitchen to see how well it would hold up over time.

The results? "The only change that I can see is that it has become hard as a rock,"Davies told the U.K. Daily Mail.

She proceeded to photograph the Happy Meal each week and posted the pictures to Flickr to record the results of her experiment. Now, just over six months later, the Happy Meal has yet to even grow mold. She told the Daily Mail that "the food is plastic to the touch and has an acrylic sheen to it."

See above picture. Mickey D's responded...

"McDonald's hamburger patties in the United States are made with 100% USDA-inspected ground beef," Riley wrote. "Our hamburgers are cooked and prepared with salt, pepper and nothing else -- no preservatives, no fillers. Our hamburger buns are baked locally, are made from North American-grown wheat flour and include common government-approved ingredients designed to assure food quality and safety. ... According to Dr. Michael Doyle, Director, Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, 'From a scientific perspective, I can safely say that the way McDonald's hamburgers are freshly processed, no hamburger would look like this after one year unless it was tampered with or held frozen.'"

As it turns out, Ms. Davies isn't the first to try this experiment. Wellness and nutrition educator Karen Hanrahan has kept a McDonald's hamburger since 1996. Her site is a must see here.

There's a guy at work, Dave. Dave's swell. Dave's entertaining. Dave's a conspiracy nut. Somewheres 'round 2-3 times per week, Dave regales me with stories of vast, worldwide conspiracies, his usual source of information being the Youtube videos that he had watched the night before. Among other things, Dave believes that a small group of men (Illuminati, Masons, take your pick) are in cahoots to create a "New World Order." This "New World Order" unfortunately calls for the elimination of 80% of the worldwide population. According to Dave, they have a few methods of doing this. As read the above information, I remembered Dave mentioning McDonald's as one such method. Apparently, this particular brand of fast food is being treated with certain chemicals that will, over time, bring about the customer's untimely demise.

So I have decided to conduct the same test as Ms. Davies and Ms. Hanrahan. Only, I will be expanding the control group, if you will. I will be purchasing a hamburger not only from McD's, but from Burger King and Wendy's as well. Let's just see how deep this conspiracy runs! Stay tuned for weekly updates.