Chicken Nuggets From McDonald’s Don’t Rot For Six Years – Here’s The Truth Behind The Viral Experiment

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The Internet is full of false stories, recirculated death announcements, celebrity death hoaxes, ridiculous get-rich quick schemes, and so much more that doesn’t need to be there. Viral stories can take off in a heartbeat, and so many don’t even bother to find the validity in it. The latest one is about some McDonald’s chicken nuggets that were allowed to sit for six years and didn’t rot at all. Seems gross, right?

Maybe it is, but there’s more truth to the viral experiment.

A woman by the name of Jennifer Lovdahl decided to conduct an experiment after something she had heard about and read on the Internet. She took that info and turned it into an experiment with a chicken nugget Happy Meal from McDonald’s, which she purchased on January 8, 2010.

She let the food from the Happy Meal just sit and rot…or in this case, not rot for six years.

As you can see, there is not much of a different look to the chicken nuggets or the french fries from the McDonald’s Happy Meal. Lovdahl had a picture of the receipt that proved the date she bought the meal. She also included a caption to explain the situation.

“It’s been 6 years since I bought this ‘Happy Meal’ at McDonald’s. It’s been sitting at our office this whole time and has not rotted, molded, or decomposed at all!!! It smells only of cardboard. We did this experiment to show our patients how unhealthy this ‘food’ is. Especially for our growing children!! There are so many chemicals in this food! Choose real food! Apples, bananas, carrots, celery….those are real fast food.”

The post was made on Facebook on February 3, and in less than a week, it has been shared over 311,000 times as of Tuesday evening. Lovedahl is the co-owner and operator of a chiropractic facility in Alaska, and she wanted everyone to see how awful the “food” from McDonald’s really is.

No, the food didn’t rot. No, the food from McDonald’s didn’t really change appearance or seem to rot at all, but that shouldn’t be surprising.

Snopes made sure to point out that the food from McDonald’s wasn’t going to rot. It dried out and food needs moisture to rot. The fact that it didn’t have moisture contributed to the fact that it didn’t rot and it ended up pretty much being preserved as it was.

This kind of viral experiment has been around for years with people trying it with different types of food, but typically getting the same result. Some have used food from McDonald’s. Others have used food from Taco Bell. There are those who have tried the experiment with delivery pizzas.

Most of the time, the result is similar – the food looks the same after months of years of sitting dormant.

A much more in-depth experiment was done by Serious Eats and it put the “magic” non-rotting or non-decomposing McDonald’s hamburger to the test. It’s known that it won’t rot or grow mold because there is no moisture present and it’s just not going to happen.

The experiment has so much more to it and really does bring a lot of different variables into the whole thing. His final word is that some people may still have a right to complain about McDonald’s food, but the science being used in these viral experiments is just bad.

Yes, at first glance, it does look bad when you see six-year-old chicken nuggets from McDonald’s that look no different from the day they were purchased. Putting a little bit of thought and research into it all though, you’ll learn that while not totally acceptable as healthy, it’s not as bad as you may think.

[Image by Chris Hondros/Getty Images]