Did you catch the news story on Yahoo News Tuesday evening? I wouldn’t have necessarily seen it, but over dinner Tuesday night SPH announced to our family table, “Who here saw the news article on the McDonald’s Happy Meal?” The words “Happy Meal” made the boys’ ears perk up, and once he had all of our rapt attention, he shared the news story which you may already have seen:

Click here

Eww, gross, yuck, and insert you own synonym for “disgusting” here.

Allegedly, six months, without refrigeration, did little to nothing to decompose or otherwise alter the hamburger and French fries from a McDonald’s Happy Meal. In fact, if you look closely at the “6 months later” photo of the meal, the only apparent change is that the hamburger patty is slightly smaller and the French fries look a bit dehydrated and wrinkly (hey, that can happen to best of us with time).

The first thing that came to mind was “preservatives!” McDonald’s maintains that their hamburger is all natural, and has no preservatives, but contains only meat, salt and pepper. But isn’t salt a type of preservative? I seem to recall during elementary social studies’ lesson on pioneers that they used to preserve their meat with salt. If this is the reason why the meat did not decompose, what does that say about the salt content of the hamburger’s meat?

As for the fries, it isn’t outside the realm of possible that the potatoes would merely dehydrate. Think of raisins, sun-dried tomatoes and other dried vegetables and fruit, and I think the fries simply dehydrating makes sense. Heck, I hate to admit it, but I once found an old French fry in my car (age unknown) that didn’t look anything but old…no mold, etc.

But then we come to the bun, which is where I really start to wonder. I have had buns, bread, and the like in my kitchen cabinet that have begun to mold after mere days or a week. Breads can even mold in the refrigerator after too long. So what is in those buns that kept them so fresh? I guess the absence of a response from McDonald’s (note: they defended their hamburgers as 100% natural, but nothing was said about the buns) probably says it all.

Of course, as I was pondering all of this in my head, G spoke for many of our kids’ by asking SPH:

“What happened to the toy?!”

And that is why these Happy Meals are so popular among the kiddos: they contain toys.

All of this just furthers my opinion that McDonald’s Happy Meals fit squarely in the “sometimes food” category, that we splurge on just once in awhile. Without discretion, kids can easily get too much “eww, gross and yuck” in their diet.

SPC