Do you see any problems with this image? Let's start with the main message-"If Bacteria don't eat it, why should you?" With at least 35 thousand species of bacteria on earth (http://mmbr.asm.org/content/68/4/686.short), you can count them as a pretty diverse group. Bacteria have a lot of different roles and eat a lot of stuff we don't so I can say with certainty that using the criterion of bacteria eating is a pretty bad criteria for if I would, or would not eat it. Bacteria will eat for instance crude oil (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gulf-oil-eating-microbes-slide-show). Bacteria also live in your gut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora) and very few people would be willing to eat what is living in their own gut. Bacteria are also significant in the hind guts of ruminants and other herbivores and I am certainly not going to eat what comes out of a cows stomach. Flawed logic here. This is wishful thinking.
Now the fries and the burger. Do you notice that they are not the same fries and burger from day one to day 180? On day 1, the fries and burger are on a plate. On Day 180 they are on a counter. Why would you choose to move them? Heck the bun doesn't have the same marks on day one that it does on day 180, and the fries are different too. How do we know that they are the same items? We don't. In fact, they look different enough, that I would argue that it is likely that they are different items from the first day to the final day. Going back to decay (cause decomposition is fascinating!), lots of things control rate of decay. In general cooked food decays more slowly than does raw food (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decomposition-please beware that this link includes some pretty yucky pictures including a pig decaying) because there is less moisture, and moisture is one of the controlling factors in decay. Even more information can be found about that here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/add_gateway_pre_2011/greenworld/decayrev1.shtml. For fun and excitement, prop up a piece of store purchased bread on your counter so that the air can get around it, and leave it out for a couple of weeks. You will notice one of several things occuring; either it will grow some lovely penicillin mould (a very common result), or it will dry out and nothing will grow on it, or if you live in a 150 year old farm house like I do, the mice will come along and eat it and all you will have left will be some nasty mouse droppings. If you do this little experiment, please feel free to share your results. And pictures if you have any.
Finally lets consider the watermelon. The watermelon has indeed decayed. I am surprised it took six months to get to this point, but there it is. To begin with, a watermelon left out on the counter would begin to dry up a bit, and then when it reached an optimal moisture content, opportunistic mould spores floating in the air would land on the fruit and begin to colonize it. W'hoo! The overgrowth of the hyphae indicate that this watermelon was kept in optimal conditions for growth and development. You can tell this is a mould by the fuzzy appearance. You can find out lots more about mould (or mold as some prefer to write it) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mould.
So in the final analysis does this poster give us any useful information? I don't think so. My mind loves to chew on stuff like this, especially when I essentially agree with the core message that eating fruit is better than eating fast food. Great message. Fail of a poster. And now you have a glimpse into what my mind does when it is not training dogs or riding my horse.
Just a final note; I will write on this blog when it amuses me to do so. I am trying to do more writing as a way to get my brain working more effectively after my traumatic brain injury. I will include my references and I like Wikipedia. Everything I can find about its accuracy indicates that it is quite accurate, because it is written only by people who actually care about what they are writing about, and it is edited only by people who are about what they are editing. Hope you enjoy what I have to share.
ADDENDUM:
I made a mistake! The watermelon is only 80 days old, which makes more sense. At 180 days it would likely be dried out completely and just be a giant mass of dead mycelium and lovely green spores. Aren't the spores pretty? I think the spores are pretty.
When I find errors in this blog I will add them as addenda so that you can see where I notice things later on. I love thinking!
