In 1999 a man from Utah bought a McDonald’s hamburger and kept it around for a month just to show his friends how it would look exactly the same because it was full of preservatives. Fast forward 14 years, the burger is almost unchanged .
David Whipple originally intended to hang on to his burger for 30 days, but somehow forgot it in the pocket of one of his coats and only found it two years later. Seeing the fast food looked almost the same as the day it was first flipped, he decided to continue his experiment just to see how long it would take until the burger disintegrated. It’s been 14 years now and the burger simply refuses to age. “It wasn’t on purpose,” Whipple said about his decision to keep the hamburger for so long. “I was showing some people how enzymes work and I thought a hamburger would be a good idea. And I used it for a month and then I forgot about it. “My wife didn’t discover it until at least a year or two after that. And we pulled it out and said ‘oh my gosh. I can’t believe it looks the same way.'” His “edible” keepsake has been recently showcased on the popular TV show “The Doctors”, and while the pickle had disintegrated, you could clearly see there was no sign of mold on the buns or the meat.
Photo: The Doctors
It’s common knowledge that fast food lasts a lot longer than it should. Just last year we wrote about Melanie Hesketh, a mom from Ontario, Canada, who had kept a McDonald’s cheeseburger for a year to discourage her teenage children from consuming ‘junk’ food, but I never imagined a burger could actually remain intact for almost a decade and a half. The doctors who inspected the old food item said it presented no sign of mold or fungus and that it didn’t even smell different. David Whipple still has the receipt dated July 7, 1999 and the original bag he has used to keep the burger in ever since. At one point he was going to auction it off on eBay and bids reached close to $2,000, but ultimately he and his wife changed their minds and decided it would be nice to have around for educational purposes. “It’s great for my grand-kids to see. To see what happens with fast food,” Whipple said.
Photo: The Doctors
Photo: The Doctors
