So think a burger and potatoes you fry up at home, and imagine leaving it on your counter for a week. What do you think would happen? Within a few days, they would become dried out and you'd soon start to see green stuff growing, right? Bacteria would be having a feast! Well, not if you'd left a McDonald's burger and fries on your counter. Check out this video: The Four Year Old McDonald's Burger

Now, the woman in the video (who in fact has released 130 pounds of excess body fat) states that the fact that it isn't breaking down is a sign that it doesn't break down in your body. That isn't exactly true. First your teeth, tongue and saliva would do their part to start the digestion process. In your stomach the hydrochloric acid would disintegrate the remaining chunks of food into a lovely sludge-like "chyme" which then in the small intestine, with the aid of pancreatic enzymes would be further broken down to break the food particles into individual, absorbable molecules.

That said, the fact that the McDonald's "food" isn't being attacked by bacteria outside the body is a sure sign of a dead food. It is so filled with preservatives and fillers that even bacteria cannot thrive. Some of the preservative effect can be attributed to high salt content (do we really need that much salt? Excess sodium is a cause of hypertension and upsets the electrolyte balance in the body), but much of it is synthetic. Synthetic preservatives are toxic, and many are carcinogenic. Most will impact the nervous system and therefore affect mood, behaviour, and memory. Some will impact reproductive health and hormonal balance, and others can weaken the immune system. Of course these impacts don't happen immediately upon ingestion - every food has only a small quantity. But over time, consistently eating processed and fast foods that use preservatives and additives (to cut costs and extend shelf life) will have a cumulative effect in the body. There is only so much your poor little liver can process.

Do your body a favour, and eat as much LIVE food as you can. They come with their own live enzymes that help you digest and absorb the lovely goodness of the vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients they deliver. Dead foods do nothing by suck the life out of you (not to mention the earth).

Footnote:
While McDonald's advertises that they use "100% pure beef" that does not mean the patty is 100% beef (just like fruit flavoured beverages will advertise that they use 100% pure fruit juice, it is only a portion of the ingredients, and it is mainly sugar and water), nor that the quality of the beef is high. In fact McDonald's pretty well owns the beef industry, as they order so much of it that they dictate the farming practices to produce quantity over quality. See the documentary Food Inc to learn more about this, it's eye opening.