Cheeseburger's wonder.

Macdonald's fries and cheeseburger on the left, and homemade burger and olive oil baked potatoes on the right.

So how long do you think you can keep a Macdonald's cheeseburger?
A famous blogger of ieatishootipost.blogspot.com wrote this atricle to show the difference between Macdonald's burger and fries, and homemade burger and fries after keeping for 4 weeks. Recently, there has been increasing arguments about Macdonald's way of cooking their food. People were commenting on the net saying that their burgers can be kept for a couple of years without decomposing. The arch enemy of good olde Ronald McDonald must undoubtedly be a guy named Morgan Spurlock who made a film called Supersize Me.  In the film he ate nothing but McDonald's for one whole month.  At the end of the month, his cholesterol levels was sky high and he gained around 11kg (total 95.5kg). Supersize Me videos can be found on Youtube. So the following is their finding:









Looking from this angle, the Mcdonald's burger may seems to be perfectly alright and edible, but take a look at it from another angle:



As you can see, mould has broken through the defenses of the bun and started a colony.  From our experiment, we can see that the bun from from my homemade burger which was bought from a local bakery got mouldy by the end of the week while the one from McD's lasted at least 3 weeks before getting mouldy.  So there must be some form of preservative that helps to retard the growth of mould in the bun.  Looking through the ingredients list of the cheeseburger bun, the most likely preservative responsible for this would be calcium proprionate.  Calcium proprionate is widely used in commercial baking as an additive to retard bacteria and mould.  As far as we know, it is non-toxic. The hamburger buns from the supermarket shelf also contain this addictive.

Personal comment:
I believe that all F&B outlets running in Singapore are required to follow strict rules and regulations. I have always trust that every food and drink that have a presence in Singapore will be safe for intake. I have seen some comments about Macdonald's burger not being decompose for years, which sounds unbelievable to me. People recently started to say that they would not eat Macdonald's anymore, having known that it needs a long time for its food to be digested in the stomach. Although i'm not quite convinced to the point that would stop myself from eating Macdonald's, but it is still not wise to eat it often. Especially kids, being a fan of fast-foods. As their bodies and immune system are still not fully well-developed at a young age, they should not be taking in so much of fast-foods. They contain large amount of preservatives, although not harmful, but still, it is definitely unhealthy. Kids should not start off their eating habits with too much of fast-foods. It is crucial that they have good eating habits since young so they can grow up healthily.

- Chua Rui Yi