Happy Meal resists mold for six months

The Consumerist/Flickr

The angel of anti-decomposition

​Hating on McDonald's is like despising big oil or the Yankees--it's easy, obvious, and has no effect on their bottom line. Which is what makes British photographer Sally Davies's experiment--photographing an untouched Happy Meal over six months to show its lack of decomposition--akin to challenging your grandpa to a footrace: You probably know the outcome before you see the photo finish.

Nevertheless, Davies's experiment has caused an uproar throughout the Interwebs, with folks calling it the "undead" and "everlasting" Happy Meal from hell. Davies herself describes the evolution of the meal to the Daily Mail:

The fries shrivelled slightly, as did the burger patty, but the overall appearance of the food did not change as the weeks turned to months. And now, at six months old, the food is plastic to the touch and has an acrylic sheen to it. The only change that I can see is that it has become hard as a rock.

Naturally, McDonald's is pissed. After citing the unsubstantiated nature of the Davies experiment, spokeswoman Theresa Riley told Yahoo that the University of Georgia's Director of Food Safety looked at the photos and declared, "No hamburger would look like this after one year unless it was tampered with or held frozen."

Interestingly enough, this experiment is not the first of its kind: Blogger Joann Bruso says she has kept a Happy Meal for an entire year , and food educator Karen Hanrahan supposedly has a burger from 1996 that she uses to scare kids and parents into making better choices--yet somehow neither of these relics generated the level of shock that Davies did with her experiment. But let's get to the real question: Does this experiment really horrify you? Will it stop you from visiting one of the 32,000 restaurants around the world? Or are you already craving two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun?