Quote:
Originally Posted by
marvin 
Shouldn't be surprising. Almost all commercial bread products will desiccate long before growing mold if left out in the open. Their fries are very unlikely to grow mold given their low moisture content in a cooked state. The beef patty is the only item that might have a chance at growing mold, but knowing McDonald's, it's dry, salty, and fatty enough to resist mold until the point where it completely dries out (which it does quickly due to patty thinness) and can't grow mold.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ClieOS Pointless, as far as that 'experiment' goes. For any experiment to be valid, you need at least a control sample, i.e. home made fries and burger similar to those from McD. Mythbusters could have do a better job.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
islewind
Well said - low moisture plus high sodium, that's all. It is not because it's "synthetic,""undigestable" or anything else. Put that same meal in a ziploc and watch it decompose just fine.
Pretty much all of the above.
Were i unemployed, I could see myself performing a more controlled experiment just to prove the point.
All on video.
My parents have a wheat grinder, so i could grind my own whole wheat flour and make some buns with all natural ingredients. Well, mostly natural, I'm not about to buy substandard yeast when i have SAF Instant already - it's preserved with a very small amount of citric acid. Shouldn't make a difference.
Get a nice piece of chuck or skirt or something from the butcher and grind it myself in my food processor. Certified organic, of course. And no feedlot history.
Chop up an onion from a local garden.
Make two burgers from scratch at home. Get two burgers from the same McDonalds.
One of each immediately goes into a ziplock baggie. The other gets left on a plate in the open air.
I bet the home made one acts just like the McDonalds one.
The only point on that where i can see some difficulty is in getting the hydration level of the home-made whole-wheat bun down towards the same range as the McD's bun. It's very likely to be more dense and moist when it comes out of the oven. Perhaps it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to just find a certified organic cake flour and use that to get a similar density and moisture level in the crumb.
Edited by ericj - 10/21/10 at 4:48pm
