- Mmm, decades-old expired burger…
Fast food isn’t meant to last. You buy it, the greasy lump of whatever exists in your hands for a fleeting moment, and then it’s gone, taking your hunger with it for a while.
But it can last. And in the right conditions, it can last for a long time.
Allow us to introduce you to the Senior Burger. This McDonald’s hamburger will soon turn 30, and it still looks more or less like it did when it stepped out into the wide world from under the golden arches.
Unlike what you might expect, the burger isn’t owned by an American. Instead, it belongs to Casey Dean and Eduard Nits, a pair of Australian buddies who inherited it from another friend who couldn’t finish his meal in the ‘90s.
Since then, Dean and Nits have cherished and cared for the hamburger. By which we mean they’ve left it lying in various cabinets and cupboards, still in its original wrapping and cardboard support ring.
Over the years, the eternal hamburger has taken Dean and Nits on many adventures. They’ve written articles about their bizarre possession, talked about it on social media, appeared on TV shows worldwide — and gotten questioned by U.S. authorities about why they did so.
Despite it all, the two friends can likely never get their burger officially recognized as the world’s oldest hamburger. For that, they’d need to show the original receipt, which wasn’t something the then-teenagers thought to keep.
McDonald’s will certainly not help them authenticate the mummified piece of fast food. For some reason, the burger giant would rather pretend the thing doesn’t exist at all, as serving everlasting burgers apparently isn’t good publicity.
The Origins of the Senior Burger
The saga of the hamburger began in November 1995. Dean, 14 years old at the time, had recently won the local battle Adelaide battle of the bands and earned a free recording session as a prize.
After a long day working in the studio with Nits and another friend, Nits’ sister was driving them all home. However, the teen boys were famished and begged her to stop at a McDonald’s.
She obliged and the boys got their food. However, the unidentified friend couldn’t finish the Quarter Pounder he’d bought, so he asked Nits to hang on to it until his next visit.
As you do with cheap hamburgers.
Sadly, for reasons they won’t disclose, Dean and Nits never saw that friend again. Nits, however, had given his word to safeguard the Quarter Pounder, and so he did — for weeks, then months.
By this point, Nits’ mother was pleading with her son to throw the slowly mummifying hamburger away. Being an obedient child, Nits did as he was told.
By which we mean that he stuffed the burger in a shoebox and hid it in his closet. That’s where it would remain for years to come, until Nits’ mom reluctantly adopted the Quarter Pounder into the family — by taking it to class to show it to her students.
From there, the burger traveled around the world as Nits and his sister (who briefly became the Burger Bearer) moved from country to country. Finally, the thing came into the possession of Dean, who keeps it in an illuminated glass case.
‘It’s No Longer Food’
So, what does the Quarter Pounder look like 30 years later? Not all that much different from that November evening in ’95, honestly.
It has shrunk in volume as moisture has inevitably evaporated from the sandwich. Otherwise, very little has changed.
The beef patty is still there, although it’s dried into a rock-hard slab. The slice of American cheese is also supposedly still there, although Dean and Nits haven’t dared to try prying the burger apart.
However, there are some remnants of the cheese stuck to the cardboard ring that once supported the burger (common in Australia).
Otherwise, there’s no mold, smell, or other spoilage. Yet, Dean would hesitate to say the thing still looks like a hamburger.
“It’s no longer food. It just looks like artwork,” he told SFGate.
That artwork has gotten the two buddies quite a lot of attention. There are many stories they could tell, but the most memorable one must be the time when they were pulled out of line at LAX while on their way to Las Vegas in 2019.
The irate homeland security agents wanted to know why Dean and Nits had just appeared on a Russian TV channel known for broadcasting state propaganda. Fortunately, the guards let them go after a good laugh once the buddies proved they had only talked about an old McDonald’s burger.
No Official Recognition
Considering it’s pushing 30, this must be the world’s oldest intact hamburger, right? It might well be, but getting official recognition for it has proven impossible.
Dean and Nits have contacted Guinness World Records, but that path has run into a brick wall. To certify the burger, Guinness says they would have to see the original receipt, which has been lost for three decades.
The Smithsonian Museum, which has fast food wrappings in its Americana collection, has also proven unhelpful. Nits says he’s asked several universities to carbon date the burger, but he’s had no luck there either — he’s been told the hamburger should be at least 5,000 years old for the tech to work.
It may be due to the lack of official recognition that the burger hasn’t been discussed much in the U.S. and Australian media. Another reason, which has been cited to Dean and Nits, is pressure from sponsors not to talk about the burger.
Who might that sponsor be? Well, we can only speculate, but we bet they’re represented by two golden arches.
“In the right environment, our burgers, like most other foods, could decompose. The burgers you are seeing are likely dried out and dehydrated, and by no means ‘the same as the day they were purchased,’” McDonald’s has said in an official statement in response to another old burger.
For some reason, Mickey D’s doesn’t believe it’s good publicity to showcase that their burgers are preserved forever simply by keeping them in a shoebox.
Yet, Dean and Nits are determined to hold on to their mummified treasure, with or without glory and fanfare.