If you, like us, were totally grossed out when you saw the pictures of a McDonald’s hamburger that sat out in the open for 6 months without decomposing or rotting, we’ve got some good news for you:
No hamburgers rot.
Well, no hamburgers roughly the same size and shape of McDonald’s plain burger, anyway.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats was sick of people hating on the Happy Meal burger without any real sense of what was going on. Sure, the McDonald’s burger doesn’t rot, but why?
To figure that out, Lopez-Alt set up his own little experiment, that involved 9 different hamburger variations, including an unwrapped McDonald’s burger (as in the original experiment), a similar sized burger he made at home, and a home-made and McDonald’s bought Quarter Pounder.
Jezebel has the full list of samples Lopez-Alt used in his experiment.
The results? None of the skinny burgers – the homemade, or the McDonalds burgers – showed signs of rot. But both of the homemade and McDonalds purchased quarter pounders got a little bit funky, meaning that the burger rot is more a matter of size, than substance.
“The burger doesn’t rot because it’s small size and relatively large surface area help it to lose moisture very fast. Without moisture, there’s no mold or bacterial growth. Of course, the meat is pretty much sterile to begin with due to the high cooking temperature helps things along as well,” Lopez-Alt remarked.
McDonald’s lovers rejoice! Though we’d still recommend that you stay away from the chicken nuggets.
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