Back in the ‘70s, my third-grade teacher demonstrated the pernicious effect of soft drinks on our tender teeth with a little experiment: leaving a tooth in a glass of Coca Cola for two weeks until it turned an unappetizing shade of brown. I don’t know if the experiment worked on anyone else, but I have never been a big soft drink fan since.
Boing Boing features a similarly horrifying classroom demonstration: Nutrition educator Karen Hanrahan shows her students a 12-year-old McDonald’s hamburger that looks exactly the same as a new hamburger. The thing hasn’t aged a day.
“People always ask me–what did you do to preserve it ?” Hanrahan writes. The answer? “Nothing–it preserved itself.” Hanrahan keeps the burger in a plastic sandwich container.
“Ladies, Gentleman, and children alike–this is a chemical food,” she continues. “There is absolutely no nutrition here.”
Of course, McDonald’s would beg to differ. And, like the Coca Cola experiment, Hanrahan’s demonstration doesn’t exactly correlate to how the body would interact with the food. As Boing Boing commenter Joe Dokes points out, Hanrahan’s burger has essentially become beef jerky. “The preservation of the burger probably says more about the humidity in her classroom than anything else,” Dokes writes.
When Morgan Spurlock tried this experiment in Super Size Me, the burger got moldy but the fries remained immortal. The difference is that Spurlock’s burgers all had condiments on them and were stored in glass jars, discouraging them from turning into jerky.
Either way, my highly scientific reaction is: Ew.
It really does not surprise me that it is possible for a McDonalds hamburger to preserve itself… it is pretty gross. Also, I have heard about the Coca Cola experiment and I heard that the same result, the turning color of teeth, actually happens. However, doesnt coffe and most other drinks also can change the color of teeth?
Also, on a completely different note, I am new to this website and I was wondering if you could tell me how you were able to add a new entry to the blog site (The Grinder). I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
mmontini, you can’t post on The Grinder or the other blogs. The bloggers are employees of Chow. You can post on the Chowhound message boards though.
Well, it seems a little unfair to say there’s not “nutrition” there – I mean, protein is protein whether iti’s from meat, soy meal, raw milk or bug parts right? What are we supposed to do, wash down Tiger Bars (if that’s what they were called? a 70s reference) with raw milk while enjoying or avoiding (depending on the day of the week or perhaps moon phase) soy products? In any event, all this suggests my mother was on to something when she used to call McD burgers “little gray patties” but hey, sometimes you just need or want a cheap, fast eatable if not necessarily palatable meal…
My dad was a chemist. When a science teacher put a nail in a glass of Coke and left it there for two weeks (the nail eventually dissolved), he said “Imagine what this stuff does to your stomach!”.
I told my father, and he laughed out loud. Stomach acid has a pH of about 1-1.5, while cola drinks are considerably weaker acids, with a pH of 2.5-3.
In Soviet Russia, stomach acid eats you!
And (some) science teachers apparently don’t have the sense not to eat nails. ;) Meanwhile, Coke actually does/did do a decent job on gunky bicycle chains. Regular Coke, anyway, not those newfangled-flavored varities… cherry was one thing, vanilla a little odd if interesting, let’s just hope they don’t come out with anything totally out of left field like “mint”
Meanwhile, re Micky D’s – how come no one’s seeing what happens to crispy chicken Ranch BLT’s? I’m kind of afraid to find out, but someone has to ask the really tough questions….
McDonalds advertises their burgers as 100% beef, and they are under intense scrutiny so I have no reason to doubt the nutritional content they print on their menus. The nutritional info also explains why the hamburger lasts so long. It’s this newfangled chemical called – “salt”. 520mg of it. Also keeping it in a cool dry container helps a lot. These techniques have been used by armies and explorers since time immemorial to preserve meat for long journeys.
Sensationalism is not the same thing as a science experiment.
Perhaps I am just pedantic, but ALL food is chemical food, given that “chemical” describes a specific arrangement of particular molecules and ALL matter is made of molecules. Everything you eat is a chemical: water is a chemical, sugar is a chemical, proteins are chemicals. By simplifying for children the complexities of choosing a food that is wholesome and/or nutritious into the false dichotomy of “chemical” and “Nonchemical”, Hanrahan and other educators – including writers, nutritionists, etc, who adhere to this sort of breakdown- do a disservice to their audience’s understanding of their food and of science. A chemical in the general sense is absolutely nothing to be afraid of, but calling some of what we eat “chemical food” because certain compounds it contains are undesirable reduces a complex problem to a falsely simple one and encourages a fearful attitude towards the sciences. Not a great idea if your motive is to really educate!
>> Sensationalism is not the same thing as a science experiment.
This reminds me, anyone happen to know offhand what the scale measurements are for the Great Pyramid at Giza? When I was a kid (another 70s reference), I felt constrained to try both an old razor blade and a slice of apple. Semi-scientific in an anecdotal sort of way, but no joy in either case… Probably wouldn’t work on a Ranch BLT sandwich either but who knows?
Re 100% beef, do they mean the patty is 100% beef or the beef in the patty is 100% beef?!