June 11, 2005

• That's not a sign of what you think it is. It shows the McDonalds kitchen to be cleaner, so it doesn't have initial spores for growths to start. To see how edible the food is (which is the point of this experiment), you'd need to give the same initial amount baby molds to each, and then see how each burger (or fry) fares after the same amount of time, in the same heat, humidity, and lighting conditions.
• Not true. Mold spores are ubiquitous in the air everywhere.
• We attempted a mold-growing experiment here at home, for the edification and amusement of The Dotta. In its simplest form, the experiment consists of wetting the corner of a piece of bread, letting it sit for a long time, and seeing what color fuzz you get. We did this in March, and as of today the bread hasn't molded yet- it's still sitting in a tray on top of the fridge, and it looks a little stale, but not so much that you wouldn't eat it if it weren't so creepy and unnatural. I think maybe some foods have more preservatives in them than others. Makes you wonder how digestible the stuff is.
• See also.
• Mold spores may be fairly ubiquitous, but I think you'll find that in places where cleanliness and fairly high hygiene standards are maintained, there is MUCH less mold in the air. I'm with Mr. Knickerbocker on this. There's no reason that the fries at one restaurant would be significantly different from the fries elsewhere, with regards to recipe. They all come frozen (except at places like IN-N-OUT) and from probably one of 4 major food distributors. Obviously the fries on the left were, at some point in the very, very long chain between tuber and table, exposed to an environment that had more spores.
• ahh. college experiments.. I remember one with a home-made version of Baileys, made for someone's birthday in the autumn of '97. The raw ingredients were double cream, Irish Whiskey, raw eggs, chocolate syrup and almond essence, and it was quite delicious. One bottle was left half-full and uncorked, forgotten in a cupboard, only to be discovered in June the following year. You probably guessed it: Everyone with a Y chromosome insisted on drinking some of this now-grey liquid; then I got hold of it and poured it down the sink. It took a thick layer of crust off the sink , that had resisted bleach, scouring pads, and limescale remover. By this time all the Y chromosome owners were regretting their actions, having discovered quite an unpleasant lingering aftertaste... heh heh heh
• chimera, the fries would both be at a "zero-spore" state immediately after deep-fat frying. Then they would be in an identical spore exposure environment after being brought home. So the huge difference in spores flying around would have to be in the restaurant just after deep-fat frying and before being brought home. I just can't believe that Mickey-D's is all that much cleaner. As an aside, McD's is the one fast-food restaurant which I absolutely refuse to eat at. The food isn't just bad, it's....absent. You bite into it and taste...nothing.
• The Flavour Corridor
• I'm no McDonald's fan, but this "experiment" strikes me as a bunch of baloney. The McDonald's fare - both the fries and the burger - consists of thinner, smaller pieces than the diner fare. I think they'd tend to dry out more quickly, retarding decay considerably. Not exactly rocket science. And from the back rooms at family-run restaurants I've seen, I would have zero trouble beleiving that McDonalds was much cleaner. Relative cleanliness was one of the big selling points of McDonalds back in the day.
• I'm wondering, have any of the "Mickey D's is cleaner" crowd actually worked in restaurants? I have, and I would guess that, if anything, the "mom and pop" restaurants are cleaner. They don't have the corporate muscle to fight a bad health rating, and a few people getting sick is all that's needed for word of mouth to spread and really hurt their small business. McDonalds food is so vastly inferior, even microbes hate it. But really, I don't see the experiment as all that valid either (controls needed!) I just love to put down the trash fare at Mickey D's.
• I would hate to live in times where there are no fungi, moulds, and slimes -- still, when I encounter 'em in the kitchen*, I start bitchin'. *Ghastly growths in refrigerator again!
• "I'm wondering, have any of the 'Mickey D's is cleaner' crowd actually worked in restaurants?" I have, and quite a few. Mostly nicer ones, fine dining. I never worked at a McDonald's, but I knew people who have. And I can tell you this: your local McDonald's is much cleaner than your locally owned restaurant. That doesn't say anything about either the quality or healthiness of their food. But I think you can be sure when you eat at a McDonald's that the kitchen is really clean and the food has not been contaminated there. (But it may have been contaminated before it got there.)
• For those who haven't worked in restaurants, the truth is simply that you don't want to see the kitchen in the vast majority of them, no matter how nice.
• My friend who worked at McDonald's says it's about the same. When I worked at a medium fancy place (fancier than mom and pop's, but still served a fair number of burgers), the kitchen surfaces were impecable and the floors in the prep kitchen quite clean - it was the floors where the active cooking, especially around the deep fryers, that got very dirty. So don't eat off the floor.
• [Warning: long post that veers slightly off topic - read at your own risk] Working at McDonald's was my first 'real' job in high school. With exception of a few years here and there, I've been in working in restaurants for the last 20 years and can say that their kitchens are cleaner than most, by a long shot. In actuality, the health department doesn't visit all that often - quarterly maybe - and it's rare that a place receives such a bad rating that it warrants being shut down on the spot. Reversing a poor rating is often as easy as getting your steam tables and refrigerators recalibrated and making sure there's handsoap in the employee restroom. This is isn't to say that your average restaurant kitchen is a sty, but I think that most people would be surprised if they saw one in action - and I'm not talking about the pretty open ones, either. McDonald's has put a great deal of money into r&d for the physical plant of their stores. This applies especially to stores constructed in the last 15 - 20 years. The interior building materials, the layout and the construction of the equipment are not only designed to maximize labor by making spaces quite efficient (and less messy) during business hours, but also to make the back of the house (kitchen, dishwashing and staging area) incredibly easy to clean and maintain. For example, most of the equipment is mounted on wheels and nearly the entire kitchen can be rearranged or cleared in minutes in order to hose down the walls and floor, then squeegee the mucky water directly into drains located throughout the kitchen floor. These details coupled with rather stringent corporate policies that even the franchises are held to, along with the fact that they aggressively secret shop their locations for quality control have made it possible for them to maintain fairly high standards. I know that it's vogue to villify corporations, Corporate America and despair the evils American consumerism and McDonald's embodies all of those in one convenient package. However, they provided excellent training, had clear standards and methods of operation, instilled great work ethics, rewarded positive performance on a frequent and regular basis, taught a bunch of spastic, hormone crazy high school kids how to be make mature decisions and take responsiblity, were incredibly accomodating about schedules while letting us have as much fun as we could in the process as long as we stayed productive. I'm not sure the same can be said for many other businesses, I certainly haven't stumbled across many since then and I feel pretty lucky to have had that as my first experience in the work force. As kmellis says, this doesn't say anything about the quality and nutritional value of their food, but I do definitely feel that they have their own well earned strong points. *clears throat awkwardly and steps of soap box*
• Well, all I know is that the restaurant I worked didn't have a room piled head high with garbage (and he didn't say how deep), like the McDonald's my friend worked at. Probably it's all different, manager to manager, and I'm sure McDonald's is more standardised than family owned restaurants.
• Too true, jb, and it also depends on the location itself. Our store wasn't allowed to keep garbage inside, but we were in a temporate area. I can't imagine asking kids to take garbage out every hour or so in the middle of winter in Iowa, for example. I would have balked.
• I think the cleanliness of any MCDonald's is pointless to debate. Like Cheeky Monkey said, it also depends on the location itself. If I had to eat from a MD and was given a choice of location, I would pick a MickeyD's in Aberdeen, South Dakota over the one on Queens Boulevard down the block from where I live in Queens NY! There are many variables at play here. Heh, as I type this, a co-worker walked past and said "I want to eat McDonalds!" The mention of trash and McDonalds always reminds me of a stop I made into a McDonalds near Columbia, South Carolina. It was late, I was driving back home and needed a pick-me-up. I step inside to get a "coffee" and see this young man sweeping up piles of trash/fries/straws from under the tables. He looked rather depressed. His name (as from his official McDonald's name tag): Debris.
• What Does the Fungus Know That You Don't? An experiment. *cackling and gibbering incoherently* er, what? this is not about magic mushrooms?