Where’s the beef? The better question may be what’s in the beef.
What’s believed to be the world’s oldest McDonald’s Quarter Pounder is about to celebrate a milestone birthday.
Casey Dean and Eduards Nits purchased the Quarter Pounder — since dubbed the “Senior Burger” by its keepers — from a Golden Arches location in Australia back in 1995, and this November, the old burger turns 30.
Dean and Nits have kept the Senior Burger carefully wrapped in its original, McD’s-stamped beige paper packaging all this time — though it looks like it hasn’t aged a day.
Despite having never been refrigerated and spending the past 30 years being stuffed in cupboards, garbage bags and sheds, it’s still “eerily intact” and hasn’t developed any mold or bad odor, Dean, a dog trainer and musician, told SFGate.
“The only thing that’s happened is it’s shrunk in size,” Nits told the outlet.
“It no longer looks like a hamburger,” he continued. “It’s no longer food. It just looks like artwork.”
Nits, a bricklayer in Adelaide, shared that he would love for the frozen-in-time Quarter Pounder to be in a gallery or museum someday.
It’s unclear exactly why the burger hasn’t seemed to age. McD’s chef Mike Haracz, who regularly spills industry secrets on TikTok, said it was a huge myth that the burgers never go bad and break down.
“When anyone talks about McDonald’s burgers never going bad — that is false,” the content creator, who was a manager of culinary innovation for McDonald’s US menu for four years, said last year.
McDonald’s, for their part, responded to the myth in 2020, saying that the hamburger’s longevity is likely due to a dry environment that inhibits the growth of mold and bacteria.
“Food prepared at home that is left to dehydrate could see similar results,” they declared. “Look closely, the burgers you are seeing are likely dried out and dehydrated, and by no means ‘the same as the day they were purchased.’”
Nits and Dean admitted that they never intended to keep the burger for this long.
Back in 1995, Dean, who was 14 at the time, won his local battle of the bands contest, which got him a recording session as a prize. After being at the studio all day, Dean, Nits and their friend went to a McDonald’s drive-thru on their way to a house party.
Nits explained that the friend couldn’t finish eating their burger and asked them to hold onto it until the next time they came to visit. The friend never came back, but Nits kept his promise.
After weeks had passed, Nits’ mom begged him to throw out the stale food that was sitting on his desk, but Nits was a stubborn teenager and refused to get rid of it.
“I put it in a box and shoved it in the cupboard so she wouldn’t find it,” he shared.
It eventually became a running joke and later became a prized possession for the family. Nits’ mom, a teacher, took the relic to show her students at school.
The burger has even traveled the world. Nits moved to Europe and his sister inherited the Senior Burger, which had become rock-solid at that point. But because her husband was in the armed forces, they relocated every three years, “so the burger just followed them around Australia,” he said.
Dean and Nits have even got the story of the Senior Burger on Russian TV and local news outlets — and they even got Joe Rogan to take notice of it.
It’s now been in their possession for 30 years — but it doesn’t seem likely that it will ever receive the formal status as the world’s oldest Quarter Pounder.
Dean is positive that the beige cardboard ring dates back to Adelaide in the 1990s — and a search on Google and Reddit should show that it is indeed similar, and it also is similar to the styrofoam packaging archived at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
“That’s better than any receipt, as far as we’re concerned,” he said.
However, in order to be included in the Guinness World Records, there needs to be “evidence to prove a record-breaking feat has been accomplished” — and the duo said they were disqualified because they didn’t have the original receipt, which likely would have faded a few weeks later.
Nits told SFGate that he tried to get several universities to carbon date the Quarter Pounder, but it wasn’t yet old enough — it needed to be at least 5,000 years old.
Regardless, Dean is determined to make the Senior Burger leave a legacy, creating social media accounts for it and intending to pass it down for generations to come.
He explained that he’s coaching Nits’ children to become the next bearers of the burger.
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