20100318

Happy Birthday, Happy Meal!

The news reported a simple but telling test done by a Nonna Joann, a blogger in Colorado. She purchased a McDonald's Happy Meal in March last year "as a silent witness to our fast food industry".

After leaving the Happy Meal on a shelf in her home for a year, what her husband initially worried about, that there would be terrible odour when the food decomposed and that it would attract ants and mice never happened. "My Happy Meal is one year old today and it looks pretty good. It NEVER smelled bad. The food did NOT decompose. It did NOT get moldy, at all," Nonna Joann said.

The TV news showed that there were two photos on her website, one showing the Happy Meal right after it was bought, the other showing the meal one year later. Except that the bread became crusty and has shrunk a bit, the hamburger still looked pretty good and the fries looked "yummy enough to eat". According to Nonna Joann, no flies never bothered to land on the food. She said that if ants, mice and flies are never fooled into touching the Happy Meal, children shouldn't either.

I wonder whether what Nonna Joann said and it being reported in the news have anything to do with the photos being there no more when I visited the website. Could she have been under some pressure to remove them, like the monumental McLibel case in in which Helen Steel and David Morris distributed leaflets with allegations against McDonald's, were sued by the fast food giant, and entered into the lengthiest court action in English history?

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