Immortal Burgers

Came across this article on the web: http://www.naturalnews.com/030074_Happy_Meal_decompose.html, and watched the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYyDXH1amic, and thought I should blog about it.

I am really glad I read the article, and I really hope more people watch the video. The article is very well-written, and I am sure the mainstream media would not have published it in its current form. We have to thank the "democracy of publishing" enabled by the world-wide-web and the social media tools.

There are multiple worrisome points from the article:

• Some of the fast-food chains are selling hamburgers that don't decompose over long periods (15 years). Even micro-organisms like bacteria/fungus/mold/yeast etc. don't want to touch these burgers for some reason  - and the conclusion by the author is - that it is not food (and that these are laced with chemicals, sodium & pesticides)
• Not clear how the government approved the food in spite of this funny feature. A huge number of Americans (25%) eat at fast-food restaurants every day, and this can be a major public-health issue (or even worse a national security issue as well)
• This phenomenon was observed by a consumer in 1989, but none of the mainstream media  published  this information till now (in-spite of the shock-value of the news). Fast-food restaurants spend lot of money on advertising (tens of billions every year), and possible this has something to do with it.
• The corporation in question here is McDonalds - one of the top brands in the world. You would imagine good brand-image brings about some social responsibility (even for marketing sake), but that doesn't seem to be the case here. More worrisome is how most of their marketing is done to entice children.

While the relationship between edible/healthy food and its decomposition-characteristics is not very clear to me, it definitely goes against my experience with food thus far, and thus worries me a bit. I most probably will stop my urge to visit a fast-food restaurant in the near future.

I believed that corporations are the solution for my anti-Malthusian theory (food production overtaking human population growth), but am not so sure any more. Hopefully, consumer activism - more than government regulation - will help reduce the dangers posed by these industries.