Holy crap! The world's oldest hamburger

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Thread started 04/23/13 4:35pm

728huey

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Holy crap! The world's oldest hamburger

A Utah man was featured on the TV show The Doctors a few days ago, and he explained how he bought a hamburger 14 years ago at McDonalds. He had planned on saving the burger for two weeks to test his friends contention that it would not spoil or rot. He put it in a coat pocket and apparently forgot about it. Two years later, he found the burger in his coat pocket, and amazingly, though the pickle had long since diappeared, the burger and bun showed no signs or mold or rot. He then decided to see how much longer it would take for it to rot or mold but gave up recently in order to tell the media.

Some observations here: if mold and bacteria won't even consume this burger, why should people consume this? And what is this doing to our insides? burger ill sick

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Reply #1 posted 04/23/13 4:42pm

morningsong	Why would you put a hamburger in your coat pocket for even 2 weeks, to see if it gets moldy? And what happened to the pickles? They decayed in his coat pocket? Sorry, I'm just stuck on food left in somebody's clothes for 2 years.
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Reply #2 posted 04/24/13 3:56am

damosuzuki

I’m at work & can’t view the video, so I’m not sure if this is mentioned, but the likely reason the burger didn’t rot or grow mould is because mcdonald’s burgers are small enough to dry out before mould can take hold. The burger may look fairly normal, but I’d expect it’s as dry and hard as a puck. Any burger of the same size will do the same thing, as long as it’s kept in a fairly dry and cool place. If the burger was kept in a bag or something that would trap moisture, it would have become mouldy I’m sure, the same way a piece of bread will dry out if left on a counter vs the way it will become mouldy when sealed in a bag.

Just did a little browsing around and found a blog that did a test of mcdonalds vs home-made burgers, and found that size seems to be the determining factor, & also found mcdonald’s burgers becoming mouldy when kept in a bag.

http://aht.seriouseats.co...sults.html

Turns out that not only did the regular McDonald's burgers not rot, but the home-ground burgers did not rot either. Samples one through five had shrunk a bit (especially the beef patties), but they showed no signs of decomposition. What does this mean?

It means that there's nothing that strange about a McDonald's burger not rotting. Any burger of the same shape will act the same way. The real question is, why?

Very interesting indeed. Sure, there's a slight difference in the actual amount of mold grown, and the homemade patty on the right seems to have shrunk more than the actual Quarter Pounder on the left (I blame that mostly on the way the patties were formed), but on the whole, the results are remarkably similar. That a Quarter Pounder grows mold but a regular-sized McDonald's burger doesn't is some pretty strong evidence in support of Theory 3 from above. Because of the larger size of a Quarter Pounder, it simply takes longer to dehydrate, giving mold more of a chance to grow.

The final two burgers I tested were a McDonald's burger and a regular homemade burger of the same dimensions placed in plastic zipper-lock bags side by side. Hopefully the bag would trap in enough moisture. The question: Would they rot? Indeed they do. Within a week, both burgers were nearly covered in little white spots of mold, eventually turning into the green and black spotted beast you see above.

Another article here:

http://www.businessinside...ot-2012-10

[Edited 4/24/13 4:35am]