There’s an old joke saying the only things that would survive a nuclear holocaust are cockroaches and Cher. We’d add Keith Richards to that list, but now a Canadian nutritionist has found one more: a McDonald’s cheeseburger.

Even bacteria won’t eat a McDonald’s burger.

Melanie Hesketh, a professional nutritionist at the Lifetime Wellness Centre in Windsor, Ontario, wanted to teach her teenaged children a little something about the non-food we call fast food. So she bought a McDonald’s cheeseburger and left it unwrapped on her kitchen counter for a full year.

At the end of the test period, it was a bit dried out but looked — and even smelled — largely the same as it did the day she brought it home, untouched by mold, maggots, fungi or bacteria.

Obviously it makes me wonder why we choose to eat food like this when even bacteria won’t eat it,” she said.

So did her experiment have any effect on her kids? Yes — her oldest son, aged 15, has eaten at McDonald’s “maybe twice” in the past year. “It’s made him more aware, and he makes better choices, definitely,” she added.

Hesketh even took the ageless burger to work. Calling it “a great eye opener,” she said, “We use it to educate our patients that what they’re putting into their bodies may not be healthy.”

Clearly combining McDonald’s with Mountain Dew would be enough to make your stomach explode.

What do you think? Does this news make you want to stop scarfing Big Macs?

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