Topics: Australia, Film and TV, Food and Drink, McDonalds, Viral
Two guys from Australia who have claimed to own ‘the oldest burger on planet Earth’ have shared what the McDonald’s staple looks like now, almost three decades after it was purchased.
They say nothing lasts forever, but Eduard Nitz and Cacey Dean’s ‘Senior Burger’ could really give that age-old phrase a run for its money.
In 1995, the pair, then 14, headed for a night out with some of Dean’s friends. On the way home, they took a pit stop at a local McDonald’s restaurant.
The story goes that one of the people that the lifelong friends were out with ordered a little too much food.
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Not being able to finish their meal, the unnamed person apparently asked Nitz to ‘look after’ his Quarter Pounder until he next met up with them in Adelaide.
“He said to me: ‘Eduard, hold on to this burger until the next time I come and visit’. And he hasn’t been to visit,” Nitz explained during a recent appearance on the Australian Channel 9 Today Show.
29 years later, Nitz has kept to his word - storing the ancient fast food item on his desk before moving it to a special box that’s been shunted between family members since 1995.
But what does a 29-year-old McDonald’s Quarter Pounder look like? Well, you can see for yourself in the images below.
Surprisingly, the so-called Senior Burger hasn’t grown any mold like other ageing food items usually do, with Nitz and Dean remarking that it was ‘too old for mold’.
“We get a lot of questions and one of them is ‘Did you do anything to it?’,” the latter confessed. “We didn’t touch it. We did nothing.”
While the Senior Burger may not look any different, it’s no longer as pillowy soft and juicy as it would have been if their friend had eaten it almost 30 years ago.
In fact, it’s actually gone rock hard, with Dean bouncing the historical artefact off the keepsake box just to prove his point.
The pair, whose Senior Burger went viral for the first time a decade ago, claimed they initially caught the public’s attention after making a Facebook page called: ‘Can this 20-year-old burger get more likes than Kanye West?’
“Then, of course, it exploded, and we ended up all over everything…We get sent fan art so we got right into it.”
There’s already a single on Spotify, with Dean and Nitz confirming there is an album dropping soon.
The pair are also in the middle of creating an Artificial Intelligence-powered ChatBot, so that fans can speak to the Senior Burger directly.
“One of my neighbours, turns out he’s right into AI so we’re actually coding him up a personality so you’ll be able to talk to the burger as a therapist.
“The whole this is pretty crazy, but it’s a legitimately old burger, so why not?,” Dean added.
Redditors have been discussing the Senior Burger for years, with one writing: “Surprise no mold even with preservative. Can’t imagine what it do inside your body.”
“I can see this burger is going to grave with 1 of them,” replied someone else.
A third replied: “Woah I totally forgot about the cardboard rings which used to come around the burgers! That triggered a deep long lost memory. I wonder when that stopped.”
When asked if McDonald’s had ‘ever acknowledged the senior burger’, the pair replied: “Yes. For any mainstream media television show to cover our burger they must first let McDonald's know.”
Tim Crowe, an Australian nutrition scientist and accredited practising dietitian, previously told ABC that the high salt content makes McDonald's burgers particularly resistant to decay.
“There is nothing insidious about the content of McDonald's food here,” he added.
"There are many better food choices for their nutrition than fast-food burgers and fries, but there is nothing to be alarmed about such food standing the test of time and staying well-preserved.”
