{"id":29556,"date":"2010-09-02T13:07:56","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T18:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/?p=29556"},"modified":"2010-09-10T09:29:16","modified_gmt":"2010-09-10T14:29:16","slug":"a-mcdonalds-hamburger-145-days-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/09\/a-mcdonalds-hamburger-145-days-later\/","title":{"rendered":"A McDonald&#8217;s Hamburger: 145 Days Later"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"The Happy Meal Project by Sally Davies\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/09\/a-mcdonalds-hamburger-145-days-later\/\" target=\"_self\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-29558\" title=\"happy-meal-project-day-one\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/happy-meal-project-day-one.jpg\" alt=\"McDonald's Hamburger after 145 Days\" width=\"300\" height=\"226\" \/><\/a>One of the eating guidelines in <a title=\"Michael Pollan Interview\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/videos\/michael-pollans-10-questions\/\" target=\"_self\">Michael Pollan<\/a>&#8216;s <em><a title=\"Michael Pollan Food Rules\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diets\/food-rules\/\" target=\"_self\">Food Rules<\/a><\/em> is to eat things that will eventually rot. Things like meat, fruits and vegetables, all eventually decompose, returning them to the organic cycle from which they came. Foods that don&#8217;t go bad, from Twinkies to Spam, have been highly processed. Not only are processed foods often full of synthetic chemicals, they&#8217;ve also been stripped of many of the nutrients that your body needs yet are still full of empty calories.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->So, with this rule in mind, should you eat a <a title=\"McDonald's Diet\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diets\/McDonalds_Diet\/\" target=\"_self\">McDonald<\/a>&#8216;s hamburger and fries? New York photographer <a title=\"Sally Davies Website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sallydaviesphoto.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sally Davies<\/a> has set out to answer this question. She&#8217;s been photographing a <a title=\"Happy Meal\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/05\/mcdonalds-happy-meal-makeover\/\" target=\"_self\">Happy Meal<\/a> every day, to demonstrate how long it will take to decompose. She began the Happy Meal Project on April 10, 2026. Today is 145 days later and the meal looks nearly identical to day one. That&#8217;s some serious preservatives in action. Imagine that next to an unprocessed piece of beef that was fresh on April 10th. It would be rotten and festering.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Happy-meal-project-day-1-to-145.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-29568\" title=\"Happy-meal-project-day-1-to-145\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Happy-meal-project-day-1-to-145.jpg\" alt=\"The Happy Meal Project: Day 1 to 145\" width=\"300\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Happy-meal-project-day-1-to-145.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Happy-meal-project-day-1-to-145-210x300.jpg 210w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>McDonald&#8217;s meals are highly engineered to appeal to our senses of sight and smell. The taste is a secondary consideration and the nutritional value is hardly factored in.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also Read:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"What Keeps a McDonald's Burger from Rotting\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/09\/what-keeps-a-mcdonalds-burger-from-rotting\/\" target=\"_self\">What Keeps A McDonald&#8217;s Burger from Rotting<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"McDonald's Happy Meal Makeover\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/05\/mcdonalds-happy-meal-makeover\/\" target=\"_self\">McDonald&#8217;s Happy Meal Makeover<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"McSmoothie Pushback: The Cheeseburger Chill\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/08\/mcsmoothie-push-back-the-cheesebruger-chill\/\" target=\"_self\">McSmoothie Push Back: The Cheeseburger Chill<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"McDonald's Angus Burgers Are a Nutritional Nightmare on a Bun\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/07\/mcdonalds-angus-burgers-are-a-nutritional-nightmare-on-a-bun\/\" target=\"_self\">McDonald&#8217;s Angus Burgers Are a Nutritional Nightmare on a Bun<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the eating guidelines in Michael Pollan&#8216;s Food Rules is to eat things that will eventually rot. Things like meat, fruits and vegetables, all eventually decompose, returning them to the organic cycle from which they came. Foods that don&#8217;t &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/09\/a-mcdonalds-hamburger-145-days-later\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3695],"tags":[2941,4128,3309,2029,29],"class_list":["post-29556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diet-and-nutrition","tag-food-rules","tag-french-fries","tag-hamburgers","tag-mcdonalds","tag-nutrition"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29556"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29563,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29556\/revisions\/29563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dietsinreview.com\/diet_column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}