Why McDonald's Happy Meal hamburgers won't decompose - the real story behind the story

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) It's always entertaining when the mainstream media "discovers" something they think is new even though the natural health community has been talking about for years. The New York Times, for example, recently ran a story entitled When Drugs Cause Problems They Are Supposed to Prevent (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/h...). We've been covering the same topic for years, reporting on how chemotherapy causes cancer, osteoporosis drugs cause bone fractures and antidepressant drugs cause suicidal behavior.

The latest "new" discovery by the mainstream media is that McDonald's Happy Meal hamburgers and fries won't decompose, even if you leave them out for six months. This story has been picked up by CNN, the Washington Post and many other MSM outlets which appear startled that junk food from fast food chains won't decompose.

The funny thing about this is that the natural health industry already covered this topic years ago. Remember Len Foley's Bionic Burger video? It was posted in 2007 and eventually racked up a whopping 2 million views on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYyD...). And this video shows a guy who bought his McDonald's hamburgers in 1989 -- burgers that still haven't decomposed in over two decades!

Now, he has an entire museum of non-decomposed burgers in his basement.

Did the mainstream media pick up on this story? Nope. Not a word. The story was completely ignored. It was only in 2010 when an artist posted a story about a non-decomposing McDonald's hamburger from six months ago that the news networks ran with the story.

Check out the video link above and you'll see an entire museum of Big Macs and hamburgers spanning the years -- none of which have decomposed.

This is especially interesting because the more recent "Happy Meal Project" which only tracks a burger for six months has drawn quite a lot of criticism from a few critics who say the burgers will decompose if you give them enough time. They obviously don't know about the mummified burger museum going all the way back to 1989. This stuff never seems to decompose!

Why don't McDonald's hamburgers decompose?

So why don't fast food burgers and fries decompose in the first place? The knee-jerk answer is often thought to be, "Well they must be made with so many chemicals that even mold won't eat them." While that's part of the answer, it's not the whole story.

The truth is many processed foods don't decompose and won't be eaten by molds, insects or even rodents. Try leaving a tub of margarine outside in your yard and see if anything bothers to eat it. You'll find that the margarine stays seems immortal, too!

Potato chips can last for decades. Frozen pizzas are remarkably resistant to decomposition. And you know those processed Christmas sausages and meats sold around the holiday season? You can keep them for years and they'll never rot.

With meats, the primary reason why they don't decompose is their high sodium content. Salt is a great preservative, as early humans have known for thousands of years. McDonald's meat patties are absolutely loaded with sodium -- so much so that they qualify as "preserved" meat, not even counting the chemicals you might find in the meat.

To me, there's not much mystery about the meat not decomposing. The real question in my mind is why don't the buns mold? That's the really scary part, since healthy bread begins to mold within days. What could possibly be in McDonald's hamburger buns that would ward off microscopic life for more than two decades?

As it turns out, unless you're a chemist you probably can't even read the ingredients list out loud. Here's what McDonald's own website says you'll find in their buns:

Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, enzymes), water, high fructose corn syrup, sugar,(both?--jef) yeast, soybean oil and/or partially hydrogenated soybean oil, contains 2% or less of the following: salt, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, wheat gluten, ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, datem, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, mono- and diglycerides, ethoxylated monoglycerides, monocalcium phosphate, enzymes, guar gum, calcium peroxide, soy flour), calcium propionate and sodium propionate (preservatives), soy lecithin.

Great stuff, huh? You gotta especially love the HFCS (diabetes, anyone?), partially-hydrogenated soybean oil (anybody want heart disease?) and the long list of chemicals such as ammonium sulfate and sodium proprionate. Yum. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

Now here's the truly shocking part about all this: In my estimation, the reason nothing will eat a McDonald's hamburger bun (except a human) is because it's not food! (dogs will eat it--jef)
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No normal animal will perceive a McDonald's hamburger bun as food, and as it turns out, neither will bacteria or fungi. To their senses, it's just not edible stuff. That's why these bionic burger buns just won't decompose.

Which brings me to my final point about this whole laughable distraction: There is only one species on planet Earth that's stupid enough to think a McDonald's hamburger is food. This species is suffering from skyrocketing rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia and obesity. This species claims to be the most intelligent species on the planet, and yet it behaves in such a moronic way that it feeds its own children poisonous chemicals and such atrocious non-foods that even fungi won't eat it (and fungi will eat cow manure, just FYI).

That's the real story here. It's not that McDonald's hamburgers won't decompose; it's that people are stupid enough to eat them. But you won't find CNN reporting that story any time soon.

Why Americans Can't Afford to Eat Healthy

Friday, July 15, 2011 by Salon.com
The real reason Big Macs are cheaper than more nutritious alternatives? Government subsidies
by David Sirota

The easiest way to explain Gallup's discovery that millions of Americans are eating fewer fruits and vegetables than they ate last year is to simply crack a snarky joke about Whole Foods really being "Whole Paycheck." Rooted in the old limousine liberal iconography, the quip conjures the notion that only Birkenstock-wearing trust-funders can afford to eat right in tough times.

It seems a tidy explanation for a disturbing trend, implying that healthy food is inherently more expensive, and thus can only be for wealthy Endive Elitists when the economy falters. But if the talking point's carefully crafted mix of faux populism and oversimplification seems a bit facile -- if the glib explanation seems almost too perfectly sculpted for your local right-wing radio blowhard -- that's because it dishonestly omits the most important part of the story. The part about how healthy food could easily be more affordable for everyone right now, if not for those ultimate elitists: agribusiness CEOs, their lobbyists and the politicians they own.

As with most issues in this new Gilded Age, the tale of the American diet is a story of the worst form of corporatism -- the kind whereby the government uses public monies to protect private profit.

In this chapter of that larger tragicomedy, lawmakers whose campaigns are underwritten by agribusinesses have used billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize those agribusinesses' specific commodities (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.) that are the key ingredients of unhealthy food. Not surprisingly, the subsidies have manufactured a price inequality that helps junk food undersell nutritious-but-unsubsidized foodstuffs like fruits and vegetables. The end result is that recession-battered consumers are increasingly forced by economic circumstance to "choose" the lower-priced junk food that their taxes support.

Corn -- which is processed into the junk-food staple corn syrup and which feeds the livestock that produce meat -- exemplifies the scheme.

"Over the past decade, the federal government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop ... artificially low," reports Time magazine. "That's why McDonald's can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 -- a bargain."

Yes, it is a bargain, but one created by deliberate government policy that serves the corn industry titans, not by any genetic advantage that makes corn derivatives automatically more affordable for the budget-strapped commoner.

The aggregate effect of such market manipulation across the agriculture industry, notes Time, is "that a dollar [can] buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit."

So while it may be amusing to use Americans' worsening recession-era diet as another excuse to promote cultural stereotypes, the nutrition crisis costing us billions in unnecessary healthcare costs is more about public policy and powerful special interests than it is about epicurean snobs and affluent tastes. Indeed, this is a problem not of individual proclivities or of agricultural biology that supposedly makes nutrition naturally unaffordable -- it is a problem of rigged economics and corrupt policymaking.

Solving the crisis, then, requires everything from recalibrating our subsidies to halting the low-income school lunch program's support for the pizza and French fry lobby (yes, they have a powerful lobby). It requires, in other words, a new level of maturity, a better appreciation for the nuanced politics of food and a commitment to changing those politics for the future.

Impossible? Hardly. A country that can engineer the seemingly unattainable economics of a $5 McDonald's feast certainly has the capacity to produce a healthy meal for the same price. It's just a matter of will -- or won't.

You are what you eat!

KILLER at LARGE

Big Food's Blame Game

To distract us from the facts, the fast food industry and its defenders blame parents for the rising child obesity rate.
by Leslie Samuelrich - Monday, October 18, 2010 by OtherWords

Corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year marketing a dangerous product to America's children.

No one disputes the danger of the product. No one disputes that the marketing successfully convinces millions of kids to use the product.
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Yet these same corporations deny that they're endangering our children. Instead, they're blaming parents. It's mom's fault. Or dad's.

How could this be? If the product were a gun, or drugs, or even a poorly designed toy that could injure a child, the corporation responsible for making it and then marketing it to the most vulnerable among us would be on the hook.

Yet since the product I'm talking about is unhealthy food, corporations expect us to apply a different standard. They want us to blame the victim, or at least the people who love the victim the most.

In the past 30 years, U.S. obesity rates have tripled among children between 12 and 19 years old. A third of children today are now officially overweight or obese. Consequently, these children are more likely to suffer from diseases once limited to grownups, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and Type II diabetes.

Sick children often grow up to be sick adults--and we all pay. Obesity is costing our country $147 billion per year, according to government-sponsored research. As a group of retired military leaders pointed out earlier this year, the crisis even undermines our national security: Being overweight is the top reason military recruits are rejected.

In this context, calls for limiting fast food marketing to children are modest. Such initiatives don't call for banning fast food; they're simply an effort to level the playing field. Each year, McDonald's and its competitors move more than a billion unhealthy meals to kids under the age of 12, primarily on the wings of toy giveaways in its Happy Meals.

As it stands now, the fight is hardly fair. Messages from nonprofits and government agencies to promote healthy eating habits for kids are overwhelmed by the flood of advertising for Chicken McNuggets, Coke, Cocoa Puffs, and other things they shouldn't eat or drink.

Consider this: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation spends $100 million a year to reverse child obesity trends--and that's the single largest effort of its type in history. In contrast, the Federal Trade Commission estimates major food and beverage corporations spend at least $1.6 billion in the United States every year--16 times more--to convince kids to eat unhealthy food. They augment traditional advertising with crafty public relations stunts, such as Ronald McDonald appearances at schools and children's hospitals.

Young children are exceptionally receptive to what they're hearing and seeing because they lack the maturity to separate reality from marketing. That's why the American Academy of Pediatrics says that "advertising directed toward children is inherently deceptive and exploits children under eight years of age."

But corporations resist reform. They know that children under 13 years old command $40 to $50 billion in direct purchasing power, and influence another $670 billion in family purchases each year.

To distract us from these facts, the fast food industry and its defenders blame parents. But the truth is simpler, revealed by the faith corporations place in their multi-million dollar marketing campaigns. Targeting children, they know, pays.

So the next time you hear moms and dads singled out for the epidemic of diet-related disease facing our country's children, follow the money.

Insurance Companies Hold Billions In Fast Food Stock

Insurance Companies Hold Billions In Fast Food Stock
04-17-2010

The fast-food industry has long been under fire for selling high-fat, high-calorie meals that have been linked to weight gain and diabetes, but the financial health of the industry continues to attract investors -- including some of the leading insurance companies in the U.S., a new study reports.

According to Harvard Medical School researchers, 11 large companies that offer life, disability, or health insurance owned about $1.9 billion in stock in the five largest fast-food companies as of June 2009.

The fast-food companies included McDonald's, Burger King, and Yum! Brands (the parent company of KFC and Taco Bell). Companies from both North America and Europe were among the insurers, including the U.S.-based Massachusetts Mutual, Northwestern Mutual, and Prudential Financial.

The researchers say insurance companies should sell their fast-food stock or use their influence as shareholders to make fast food healthier, by pressuring big restaurant chains to cut portion sizes or improve nutrition, for instance.

There's a "potential disconnect" between the mission of insurance companies and the often-unhealthy food churned out by companies like McDonald's, they write.

"The insurance industry cares about making money, and it doesn't really care how," says the senior author of the study, J. Wesley Boyd, M.D., an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, in Boston. "They will invest in products that contribute to significant morbidity and mortality if doing so is going to make money."

Boyd and his colleagues used a database that draws on financial filings and news reports to estimate the fast-food investments of the 11 companies. Their findings appear in the American Journal of Public Health.

Massachusetts Mutual and Northwestern Mutual -- which both offer life, disability, and long-term care insurance -- owned $367 million and $422 million in fast-food stock, respectively, much of it in McDonald's, the authors report. Prudential, which offers life insurance and long-term disability coverage, held $356 million in fast-food stock, according to the study.

Insurance companies disputed these figures. Andrea Austin, the assistant director of corporate relations for Northwestern Mutual, in Milwaukee, says the company's investment in fast-food companies is only about $250 million, and was at the time the study was conducted. That amounts to about one-fifth of 1 percent of the company's portfolio, she adds.

Austin also disagrees that the company's fast-food investments represent a disconnect with its mission. "We have to determine what's going to give our policy owners value," she says. "We have to make sure we fulfill our obligations to them, and to do that we invest in a wide variety of industries. It's that diversification that enables us to return value to them."

In an e-mail, MassMutual spokesman Mark Cybulski called the study's findings "absolutely incorrect" and said that as of December 31, the company's holdings of fast-food-related stock amounted to just $1.4 million, which represents less than one-hundredth of 1 percent of the company's $86.6 billion in cash and total invested assets.

Austin says she has "no idea" why the figures differ and says that Northwestern Mutual doesn't use subsidiaries.

Theresa Miller, the vice president of global communications for Prudential Financial, said in an e-mail that she could not discuss the specifics of the company's portfolios. But she noted that the investments in the report are within index funds, and that "a large portion" are managed on behalf of third-party clients.

MassMutual, Northwestern, and Sun Life (another insurer mentioned in the report) have contested Boyd's findings in the past. Last year Boyd led a similar analysis, published as a letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine, that found that seven insurance companies held some $4.5 billion in tobacco-company stock. Then, too, Cybulski said that MassMutual's holdings were just a fraction of what Boyd and his colleagues claimed.

According to Boyd, the discrepancy in his figures and those cited by MassMutual may be due in part to two factors: Insurance companies may invest in fast-food stocks through subsidiaries over which they have limited oversight (and therefore may not consider them direct investments), and some of the investments may be in index funds, a type of mutual fund tied to the collective performance of a large group of stocks, such as the S&P 500, which may include those of fast-food companies.

The database used in his analysis provides only the aggregate of a company's holdings, Boyd says.

Austin says she has "no idea" why the figures differ and says that Northwestern Mutual doesn't use subsidiaries.

Boyd and his co-authors emphasize that fast food -- unlike cigarette smoking -- can be safe in moderation.

However, a growing body of research has linked frequent fast-food consumption to weight gain, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

As a result, the study notes, several cities and towns have restricted fast-food restaurants via zoning laws. And under the health-care legislation passed by Congress in March, chain restaurants will have to post calorie information on their menus, as is already required in New York City.

In their 2009 paper on tobacco, Boyd and his colleagues suggested that insurance companies profit twice over by investing in tobacco stocks, since they can charge higher premiums to smokers and also profit if the stock rises. A similar dynamic may be at work with fast food, according to Boyd.

"They can charge you more for life insurance if you have these negative health outcomes that people have as a result of eating fast food," he says.

But investing in unhealthy industries such as fast food and tobacco isn't necessarily a win-win for insurers over the long term, especially for health insurers, says Sara N. Bleich, Ph.D., an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore, Maryland.

"Health insurance companies get profits if they invest in tobacco and fast food, [but] these are some of the top drivers of mortality in the country," says Bleich, who researches obesity policy but was not involved in the current study.

"They are essentially killing off their consumer base, so it's not a sustainable model in the long-term. Long-term goals should be consistent with health, because that ensures a large population from which to draw consumers."

Robert Zirkelbach, the press secretary for America's Health Insurance Plans, a national association representing health insurers whose Web site lists three of the companies named in the study, declined to comment on the specifics of the study. "Our industry is strongly committed to prevention and wellness," Zirkelbach said in a statement.

"Health insurance companies are doing things across the country that are working to address obesity, to promote prevention, and to encourage people to live healthier lifestyles."

Gigi Kellett, the director of the anti-tobacco campaign of Corporate Accountability International, a Boston-based watchdog group, says that both tobacco and fast food are inappropriate investments for insurance companies.

"Tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death around the world, and there is growing research that diet-related diseases could soon surpass tobacco," she says. "It's irresponsible for insurance companies to invest in companies that make people sick."

Corporate Accountability International recently launched a "Retire Ronald" campaign to pressure McDonald's to discontinue the Ronald McDonald clown character and rein in its marketing to children, Kellett adds.

For her part, Bleich says that while health insurance companies, specifically, should be encouraged to divest their fast-food investments, encouraging self-regulation and competition in the fast-food industry may be a more effective way to make the industry healthier