You want fries with that?

There was a time, not in the too distant past, when my friend "J" (I disguise her name to protect her identity, but it starts with "J" and rhymes with "Ulie") and I would, every few weeks, treat ourselves to a huge lunch at the local McDonald's. Yup -- the whole nine yards: a Big Mac or Filet-O-Fish sandwich, a supersize order of fries (extra salt, please!), and one of those plastic buckets of soda. The salt and grease tasted so good, but about an hour after we returned to work, we'd call each other, complaining that our stomachs ached.

We eventually got smarter and stopped eating at the Golden Arches - and now when we get together for lunch, we eat at Cafe Asiana, which incidentally is directly across the street from McDonald's. And we laugh about how gluttonous our noontime meals used to be.

Anyway, I saw this post today about an artist in New York who last April purchased a McDonald's "Happy Meal", and instead of eating it, left it uncovered on her kitchen counter just to see what would happen. She's been snapping a photo of the burger and fries every day since last spring, and to her horror, the "food" looks pretty much the same as it did when she bought it.

Sure, says artist Sally Davies, the fries and the burger patty shriveled up a bit, but the bun shows no signs of decay or mold. "And now, at six months, the food is plastic to the touch and has an acrylic sheen to it," she says.

Here's what the food looks like after 171 days on the counter (Sally says that after just 48 hours, the meal no longer emitted any smell -- even her dogs lost interest):

Pretty wild, huh? One more reason to be happy about my break-up with McDonald's. So inquiring minds want to know: why is this food is not spoiling?