How do you imagine a hamburger looking after 12 years? Covered in mold? Emitting a repulsive odor? Well if your hamburger happens to be from McDonald’s, then it will look nearly identical to a fresh one.

Wellness educator and nutrition consultant Karen Hanrahan has kept a McDonald’s hamburger since 1996 to prove her theory of its inability to decay, and in 2008, besides from having a odd smell and drying out,the burger has not changed.

93% of the moisture in a regular McDonald’s burger is lost is the first three days.This explains why the burger did not rot. In order to rot, the burger would need moisture for mold to grow.

But burgers that won’t rot isn’t the only thing wrong with fast food. A photo of “pink slime” recently went viral on the internet,
revealing that the meat used to make foods like chicken nuggets and chicken sandwiches isn’t exactly natural.

Pink slime, referred to in the industry as “lean finely textured beef and boneless lean beef trimmings,” is a beef-based food additive
that is added to ground beef and beef-based processed meats as a cheap filler. It is made of finely ground beef scraps, sinew, fat, and connective tissue, which have been mechanically removed in a heated centrifuge from the fat into liquid fat and a protein paste.

And if that’s not enough to make you put down your chicken McNuggets, the paste is then sprayed with ammonia to sanitize it, and then artificial scents and flavors are added to it to give it the illusion of fresh meat.

Even with the artificial meat aside, fast food meals are very damaging to one’s health.

Fast food is feeding a growing epidemic in our country. It  is largely responsible for the 35.7% of the US population that suffers from obesity. Among children aged 2-19, 1 in 3 are overweight or obese. And it is increasing every year.

Companies like McDonald’s and Burger King are targeting young children in their ad campaigns. Many commercials air during popular children’s shows, advertising “kids meals” that include a fun toy. Attracting kids to this unhealthy lifestyle is a huge factor in the growing number of obese children in America.

But if fast food is a part of your daily diet and the weight gain isn’t enough reason to make you stay away from it, you should know that all of these side effects have been linked to overconsumption of fast food: sleep apnea, diabetes, impotence, high blood pressure, most types of cancer, headache, esophageal reflux, infertility, heart disease, gallstones, osteoarthritis, depression, stroke, insulin resistance, asthma, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and lower back pain.

“I can definitely feel the difference when I eat fast food before practice,” said VHS junior and track athlete, Kelsey Attamante. “It’s
like my body just doesn’t want to move. And it really affects my times.”

In fact, if you have a McDonald’s Big Mac, large fries, and a Coke, you would need to walk for six hours straight to burn off those
calories. Many items on the McDonalds menu have nearly 1000 calories in them, which is half of the recommended calorie intake per day.

So are the health risks and the weight gain really worth the cheap and fast meals? Next time, you are deciding on a meal, stay away from fast food restaurants.