14 DAY TRIAL // This story could easily be titled “The Power of Preservatives” or “Don’t Feed Your Kids Poison,” it’s being said. One nutritionist and blogger, Joann Bruso, has set for herself the task of seeing how McDonald’s food goes bad and bought a Happy Meal precisely for the purpose. What she found out was that, believe it or not, this junk food did not rot, decay or gather mold – not even after one whole year.
Writing on her blog BabyBites, Bruso herself admits she was incredibly surprised when she saw that one year meant nothing in terms of making the McDonald’s fries and burgers go bad. Of course, she partly expected something like that to happen, but at the very least she would have liked to see some mold on the food or something. Instead, after one year, both the burger and fries looked intact, albeit a bit dried up, retaining their original coloring and not smelling like anything at all (neither like McDonald’s nor like food gone bad).
“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,” Bruso writes of her experiment.
The fact that McDonald’s didn’t go bad like regular food goes to show just how pumped up with preservatives it is. More importantly, this little experiment should show all mothers (and parents in general), since it’s to them that Bruso’s blog is dedicated, that they should not let their kids eat this kind of junk food. Just to help them get the right idea, the nutritionist also points out that not even flies or ants touched the food for the entire time it was on that shelf.
“Food is supposed to decompose, go bad and smell foul eventually. The fact that it has not decomposed shows you how unhealthy it is for children. I had the windows open many times, but flies and other insects just ignored the Happy Meal. What does that tell you, if they can’t be bothered with it? Food is broken down into its essential nutrients in our bodies and turned into fuel. Our children grow strong bodies when they eat real food. If flies ignore a Happy Meal and microbes don’t decompose it, then your child’s body can’t properly metabolize it either. Now you know why it’s called junk food,” Mrs. Bruso writes.