fantastic amazing

kyn:

rassilon:

lavenderlines:

rakalak:

zuky:

sheresists:

adailyriot:

timekiller-s:

dihard:

“Things that are made from organic material age and decay, especially when they stop being alive. A piece of home-baked bread, say, left on your kitchen counter, will get moldy relatively fast. Lord knows what some ground beef would smell like after a week. But the artist Sally Davies has been photographing one McDonald’s hamburger and fries every day for 137 days. They look basically exactly the same.” via GOOD

Go read this:

http://velvetparkmedia.com/blogs/not-so-happy-meals

In which Nonna Joann of babybites.info kept a Happy Meal around for a whole year. That blog is here: http://www.babybites.info/2009/03/03/happy-meal-blog/

And here’s what Nonna’s Happy Meal looked like after 365 days: http://www.babybites.info/2010/03/03/1-year-happy-meal/

Sorry I don’t feel like opening the HTML window.

I would never feed this to a child.

Well, if you would never feed this to a child, it’s probably because you’ve never been put in a position where it was your best option.

Frankly the persistent and seemingly random gross-out tactics of many dietary regimen crusaders strike me as really peculiar and a little provincial. I mean, Chinese culture has spent thousands of years developing food preservation techniques to make food last without refrigeration, but apparently now some people think that’s gross. It’s a good thing 19th century Chinese railroad workers in the US and Canada didn’t abide by a “Happy Meal Project” test when they were eating the dried minced fish, pickled vegetables, salted eggs, fermented bean curd, and dried tea leaves which could take years to make it from farm to table, because then they would have been eating what their white counterparts were eating which often made people ill. Even now I have many Chinese ingredients in my pantry — many of them medicinal — which will easily last a year without visible changes.

Not that I’m a proponent of fast food. Personally I have very healthy eating habits. I grow my own vegetables and cook fresh food every day. But I also have zero problem with folks who like a Big Mac with fries and a shake now and then, or with folks who determine that a fast or frozen meal is their most economically viable option. Life is complicated and absolutism usually doesn’t work out well. Sometimes you gotta bend in order not to break.

The bolding in zuky’s excellent response is mine.

I was going to just like this and move on, but I actually have some thoughts/honesty about this photo. Because before I’d read the text and everything processed, my initial thought was ooh, I’d eat a right now. And “I’d eat that right now,” is more of a joke than anything.  As a vegetarian of 4-ish years I wouldn’t actually eat that, but I do miss kosher hot dogs and burgers pretty often. The point though, is that I have in fact eaten many a wilted meal that looked just like this (I was the kid who ordered ketchup only hamburgers because I hated any of the other condiments). And honestly, a lot of “fresh” burgers from McDonalds, Burger King, Rally’s, etc. looks like this. I grew up on fast food and microwave dinners and the food my mom brought home from work (leftovers from the schools she cooked lunch at). The food all those folks nowadays like to blog about, horrified at the kind of food public schools peddle out to “the children.” I honestly have fond memories of food like that. And fuck! It tastes gooood sometimes. I know the fast food industry is disgusting. I know that we need to revolutionize and completely change the way food is produced, and, perhaps more importantly, who has access to it in this country (uhh, the U.S. for me, and the only place I feel comfortable talking about concerning this). But nagging about fast food, all those documentaries, fucking Jamie Oliver (who I still kinda hate in this petty way) isn’t going to fix anything. It shames. It shames people who already can’t afford to buy organic or have the time to prepare meals, let alone sit down and eat with their family. That’s not gunna fix shit. It just feeds the machine. People are shamed enough. That needs to end.

reblogged for zuky’s commentary in particular.

i ate kfc almost every night for about 2 years when i was a kid because my mother worked/commuted 15 hours a day, seven days a week, just to make rent. the woman drives me up the wall now, but i am not gonna hate on her for not feeling like cooking me a ~well-balanced meal~ when i was a kid. 

…

we are all going to die

oh god

Uh…seriously. I don’t care how ~*awesome*~ you are now, being raised on McDonalds and fast food and microwaved dinners is gross and really unhealthy. Kids should not be raised eating this shit. Times are tough, but rice and chicken from the store is not expensive. And it’s way better than eating 137 day old Mcdonalds hamburgers and french fries.