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Comment by deepvibrations | Hacker News Reader

Err, yeah..but lets take the 'regular bun' for example- in that you have:

Ingredients: Enriched Flour (Bleached Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup and/or Sugar, Yeast, Soybean Oil and/or Canola Oil, Contains 2% or Less: Salt, Wheat Gluten, Calcium Sulfate, Calcium Carbonate, Ammonium Sulfate, Ammonium Chloride, Dough Conditioners (May Contain One or More of: Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, DATEM, Ascorbic Acid, Azodicarbonamide, Mono and Diglycerides, Ethoxylated Monoglycerides, Monocalcium Phosphate, Enzymes, Guar Gum, Calcium Peroxide), Sorbic Acid (Preservative), Calcium Propionate and/or Sodium Propionate (Preservatives), Soy Lecithin, Sesame Seed.

Looking at that, I think narrator has a good point!

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Unless you make your bread from scratch this is what supermarket bread is like too.

I don't mean to fear-monger, but at least I can read and mentally visualize all of the ingredients in some supermarket breads. See here: http://www.womenandweight.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/pep...

I don't know what any of these are: Ammonium Sulfate, Ammonium Chloride, Dough Conditioners (May Contain One or More of: Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, DATEM, Ascorbic Acid, Azodicarbonamide, Mono and Diglycerides, Ethoxylated Monoglycerides, Monocalcium Phosphate, Enzymes, Guar Gum, Calcium Peroxide), Sorbic Acid (Preservative), Calcium Propionate and/or Sodium Propionate (Preservatives)

Please note, I'm not trying to go all "dihydrogen monoxide" here, because I do know and understand that modern food, and as a result modern global health, processes rely on chemicals with names like the above ingredients.

Also, maybe more viscerally, I'd wager that the McDonald's bun is one of those food items that has an unrefrigerated shelf life approaching infinity. (/s?). To think that something that even bacteria and molds won't be able to eat and break down is going to enter my body as sustenance...that's a little unsettling. At least with the supermarket bread I've posted, it probably won't last more than a week or two on the kitchen counter. In my uneducated opinion, that probably means that things like that won't linger around in my body too long to cause any lasting impacts, good or bad.

No, they go moldy too. I've seen it happen.

Now let's see what's in the bread at Panera, or the bun at Five Guys or Shake Shack, or the tortilla at Chipotle. If you're expecting artisan bread baked early that morning by a master chef, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

Here's Chipotle's large tortilla ingredients:

Flour, Water, Organic Whole Wheat Flour, Non-GMO Canola Oil, Salt, Non-GMO Baking Soda (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Monocalcium Phosphate), Wheat Bran, Fumaric Acid , Calcium Propionate , Sorbic Acid , Sodium Metabisulfite.

And how about the ciabatta bread that Panera uses in their sandwiches?

Unbleached enriched wheat flour (flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, country base (natural wheat sour, salt, rye flour, wheat gluten, malted barley flour, sunflower lecithin, ascorbic acid, enzymes), olive oil blend (extra virgin olive oil, canola oil), natural base (calcium diphosphate, malted barley flour, dextrose, distilled monoglycerides, rye flour, sunflower lecithin, wheat flour, enzymes, ascorbic acid), yeast (yeast, sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid)

Five Guys is, um, pretty open too. I wonder what the "secondary" ingredients are:

Our bread is a proprietary recipe. The primary ingredients are: Water, Salt, Sugar, Vegetable Shorting (Contains: Soy), Milk, Eggs, Bleached Bread Flour, Yeast, Sesame Seeds

I agree... I don't think that other chains necessarily make more "natural" food than McDonalds and I wasn't really trying to draw out that comparison. I'm not a paleo/organic advocate by any means. "Country base" and "natural base" are euphemisms if I've heard them. Those places do have a better marketing tact though.

Just stumbled across this response from McDonald's themselves... maybe it's less about preservatives and more about dry and salty food (a la beef jerky) http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/your_questions/our_food/why-d...

But if you scan this entire thread as it grows (like the previous 6 "McDonald's is in trouble" threads on HN over the past year), you'll see that mantra repeated over and over. The food is shit. The upscale food is better.

It's an image McDonald's knows they need to combat and their newest ad campaigns are already working on that angle.

I'm not defending MCD by any stretch of the imagination. But it's amazing how the food was just fine when the economy was in the shitter and people got by on $1 McDoubles. Now that things are turning around and wages are microscopically better, suddenly everyone's a foodie and that $11 2000-calorie Chipotle lunch is a feel-good while the McDouble is dog food.

The cycle will repeat.

> To think that something that even bacteria and molds won't be able to eat and break down is going to enter my body as sustenance...that's a little unsettling.

Do you eat salt? Dried pasta? Rice? Honey? None of these things really go off, either.

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/11/the-burger-lab-r...

> It means that there's nothing that strange about a McDonald's burger not rotting. Any burger of the same shape will act the same way. The real question is, why?

TL;DR: moisture content is the issue. If you get a thin, dry piece of supermarket bread it'll sit there forever too.

Well I think this depends. I think most people who avoid McDonalds are the kind of people who also read the ingredients of the products they buy, so they would choose a bread with much fewer preservatives etc. The in-store bakery bread also has fewer ingredients by a long way. Eg. Tesco white rolls: Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Yeast, Salt, Wheat Gluten, Emulsifier (Mono- and Di-Acetyltartaric Esters of Mono- and Di-Glycerides of Fatty Acids), Flour Treatment Agent (Ascorbic Acid) (at least that list is reasonable so I can look them all up!)

The supermarket "bakery" is such a scam - what they do can hardly be considered "baking."

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