How Nasty Are McDonalds Fries?

Thats why you should eat tacos and burritos. Stay away from fast food? not likely. I wonder how long it takes for a Taco Bell burrito supreme to break down? I know how long it takes me to eat it and pass it through my system. About 25 min total.

I hate McDonalds. Awful.

I agree with some other people in here. If you have a problem with it, then don't eat it. Also, there's other dangers as well besides McDonalds.

But I'd say there's definitely something up with those fries. Yeah, a jar isn't exactly our stomach. There's no acid in the jar. But compare the two jars of fries. Why did those others go so much quicker than McDonalds'? Clearly there's something in there.

That was a disgusting video, by the way. There about week 10 is how I view McDonalds food anyway, but it still made me sick. The commentary talking about how juicy it was and all that didn't help either.

Can somebody explain to me what actually happens in the video? YouTube is blocked at work and I've no internet access at home at the moment.

Thanks!

I used to go there all the time as a student, and shout my flatmate a Big Mac as he was anorexic and I felt sorry for him and it was all he would want to eat. I felt like I was eating unhealthy and used to be a thin person but gained weight significantly as a student, due to my fast food diet and couldn't be bothered cooking.

But I have been Maccas-free since 2000 now. I struggle to lose the kilos I put on (was 76kg and now 95kg - what I've been since being a student... I'm 6ft 3). It feels like an albatross on my neck and I simply don't go there anymore. I used to love KFC but I don't go there now either. I had soup for dinner tonight, and carrots for snacks. I'm trying to make that change.

I'm not sure why everyone thinks there is such a 'mystery'.

McDonald's fries are covered in salt. In other words, they are simply cured. Of course nothing will grow on them...

I bet they'd still taste awful.

Btw, rancid fat will still 'look' like fat.



[edit on 4-9-2007 by loam]

Just to say that I work in McDonalds, and I find the experiment grossly unfair. My tummy isn't a glass jar last time I checked, and mcdonalds food moldes like everything else. Did anyone notice that the normal burger, and normal fries or chips turned black and they had to throw them out cause they smelled so bad? Yup, I'm sure that's way healthier then the mcdonalds food.
The fries I concede are probebly the most unhealthiest food I've ever encountered though. Just don't eat them, or anything that contains bacon.

[edit on 4/9/07 by MacDonagh]

As I type this, I'm sitting here eating a Big Mac, "Fries" and a cola. It hasn't put me off... The simple fact is, this food wont sit in my stomach for weeks.. itll come out the other end in a few hours, and if it did id rather have this in there than something that turned to jelly


Really, just make sure you eat a proper diet and don't stick with fast food. Have it as a treat if you like it.

There is a big difference between food breaking down in a sterile jar, and food breaking down in highly corrosive stomach acid. This experiment is as flawed as the people asking doctors to ingest pure amounts of substances found in vaccinations. A McDonalds hamburger will not last 20 minutes in your stomach until it's no longer recognizable.

[edit on 9/4/2007 by Yarcofin]

French fries and experiments, and no - I don't have nifty video.
One autumn, for reasons too stupid to bother explaining, my husband filled the bed of our pick up truck with aluminum cans. The truck sat under a tree collecting falling leaves and more cans. That December we drove to the recycling center and cashed them all in. The leaves had mostly turned to dirt by then. We shoveled the cans into the weighing bin, and discovered that leaves do indeed biodegrade. There was a good half inch of black dirt in the grooves of the truck bed. There were also some old french fries. The fries looked practically new.
When my son's 2nd grade class was asked to bring in a little bit of last night's dinner for an experiment in decay, I remembered the thing with the cans and picked up some fries too. Half the food was sealed in plastic bags and hung in the window for 2 months. The other half was buried in the ground for 2 months.
The kids watched as their food broke down. The fries in the baggy did eventually break down. The buried fries didn't.

When my son went to high school and got to use the science lab, one of his projects was to study the breakdown of food in stomach acids. He brought in french fries from Mc Donalds. The beaker of acid broke the fries down just fine.

I can definitively say that previously frozen, fried potatoes break down in a plastic baggie and break down in acid. They'll survive a long time in a landfill though. So eat up!

I dont buy the mcdonalds has brainwashed us theory.

Because, I grew up in the U.S., eating Mcdonalds frequently, getting happy meals and all that. But now that I am an adult, and ever since my teen years, I immediately sought better food because lets face it.. McD's burgers are CRAP! tasting nowadays. Tasted better 15yrs ago.

So as soon as I could drive, I was hitting up the other fast food chains when I was trying to eat fast food. From all my experience in the subject, this is what I came up with for the best tasting food from which chain:

Breakfast: Hardees has it on lock down. They own the breakfast time hours.

Lunch/Dinner (pre-late night): Arbys gets firstplace for sheer variety of foods which are all tasty. Chick Fila gets an honorable mention for having real good chicken, but nothing else. Wendys is another to mention, but only certain items on the menu, and also certain locations have better prep than others.

Late Night: Wendys becomes firstplace for late night merely because the only other places open as late are Taco Bell and Mcdonalds with a simplified "late night menu". I'll goto Taco Bell and get steak instead of beef before I goto McD's.

Now, that said, McD's are still the King of fast food french fries. Burger King's fries suck, Wendy's are OK, Hardees are OK, but nothing compares quite to the McD's lol. Arbys curly fries are excellent. But so are the potato cakes and the potato wedges. Were it not for their french fries, McDs would get zero business from me.

And If I do eat from the McD's menu I get chicken. The higher priced chicken items to ensure a decent tasting sandwich or wrap or w/e.

PS: I am a 24yr old male, I'm 6 foot 2 and weigh a lowly 155lbs. I've always had a problem maintaining any level of body fat. I've also always had digestive problems where I guess most of the fat gets .. shall we say.. bypassed out the backdoor? I apologize for the TMI ..

All this talking about fast food is making me fiend for grease. It's 10:25am though, so I doubt I could snag some excellent breakfast before the time limit! Looks like I'd have to get lunch. Good thing there is an Arbys less than 2 miles from my house.

[edit on 9/4/2007 by runetang]

Call me crazy but all this talk f McD's is making me crave a big mac! That is what thier marketing dept. loves.
Even negative publicity is good for them!
I hardly ever eat there and from now on I will skip the fries.

The good news is after a nuc. bomb goes off the cockroachs will have something left to eat!

Wendy's trumps McDonald's anyday. more often than not, the people who work at McDonald's are the meanest looking things anyway, regardless of which country youre in.

there is a difference between a junk food diet and enjoying a big mac (or in my case, a wendy's chicken fillet sandwich) once in a while. why live without indulging occasionally?

this experiment is a more bad science that makes conclusions where it shouldnt.

Oh Good Lord. I'm never going to have Mc Donalds again... Ah, screw it, might as well die young. Can't resist the cold coffees

i dont see how the expierment is flawed sorry

expierment = throw food in jars, see what happens

it seems to me they successfully threw things and jars, and successfully watched the jars ...

it has nothing to do with anything else, conclusions made by ppl are their own OPINIONS

the Fact remains tho, mcD's fries are NOT appealing to bacteria
the expierment proves this reasonably

ive had plenty of McD fries in my lifetime, and they suck. They always burn them, overcook them, or give them to me Cold.

thats why i dont ever buy food from McD's , cuz they suck and need to lrn to compete with the places that serve a DECENT MEAL!

I think all fast food and all that unhealthy stuff is great every once in a while. Why live all dull and eat carrots and celery your whole life? Some people go over board and eat it daily, and that's bad. But as long as you don't make a living out of it, I really don't see the problem in it at all.

I think people are overlooking the real purpose of the video. It isn't to show how long food would store in your body, but to show exactly how un-natural their food has become.

What would cause "potatoes" to keep from growing fungus or be broken down by bacteria? If a chemical/preservative is that strong, think of what it will do once its in your body.

This guy bought like 5 or 6 things from McDonalds. There's a BigMac, quarter pounder, fish fillet sandwich, and some other sandwiches, as well as McDonalds fries, and a hamburger and fries from some other place, and put them all in their own jars.

They left the food in the jars for two weeks, video taped the results, and alot of them were starting to show signs of rotting and molding. The McDonalds fries and BigMac showed nothing.

Then they checked again at the three week point, and video taped it, and the food had molded more. The McDonalds fries still showed no molding or rotting. The BigMac was starting to show it.

Then they checked again at, I think, 8 weeks, and video taped it. The McDonalds fries still had nothing wrong with them at all. Everything else looked awful.

Don't eat while you watch it if you ever do get around to watching it.

Thank You for clearing that up.

I wanted to say exactly the same thing.

This "french fries" in the video are kind of NOT normal if they stay so long completly untuched by fungus. Yes, of course tummy acid will break down this "french fries", but the very elements and preservatives and all the chemicals present will also be in your body and the very genetic information shall be passed into your cells. Fast food is designed to be created in big numbers in a short time of preparing and, yes sometimes they are ideal to visit when you are in a hurry. But there are other places to eat when in a hurry and McDonalds has a reputation of "hooking" children as young as three years old to their "taste" of food and it was proven one time by the famous cook Jamie Oliver and by the author of this video in the movie Supersize Me, that children in schools just LOVE to eat fast food and hardly touch anything else when their body is young and should receive enormous portions of HEALTHY not geneticly modified food, which is pull of preservatives. But that is just my opinion. If I had kids, I sure would not take them to eat at McDonalds. There are plenty of better ways to fill your tummy without eating such crap.

But the video is misleading... it starts off saying quote:

"Just gonna give you an idea of how this food is breaking down in your body, I'm just gonna put it in some jars."

He says himself that the experiment is supposed to be a representation of how the food breaks down in your body.

You can store raw, perfectly healthy whole potatoes for weeks or even months without them being eaten by bacteria as well... all you have to do is keep them dry and in a relatively cool, dark place.

[edit on 9/4/2007 by Yarcofin]

Hmm. Lets see. Take some potato, cut it very thinly.

Immerse it in very hot oil, ensuring all the residual bacteria on it is completely dead, and then cover it in a natural preservative.

Then stick it in a jar and prove what exactly? That all the bacteria on/in it is dead and the salt can preserve it?

The video means nothing. It doesn't prove anything at all, other than people have far too much time on their hands.