dognose
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'It's no longer food'
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| In Australia and Texas, two groups of people are harboring an ancient relic. Well, ancient in fast food years, at least. |
News Features Reporter
Oct 29, 2025
The confusion began when Casey Dean received a mysterious dot on his plane ticket. The self-described alien enthusiast and “X-Files” fan, who was traveling to Area 51 for his 39th birthday, thought it was unusual. He had never seen it before and didn’t know what it could mean for international tourists like himself. But, like most people passing time at the airport, he had a few beers and forgot about it, continuing on his tedious 30-hour journey from Sydney to Las Vegas.
Just as he was about to board his connecting flight at LAX, an enormous airport security guard suddenly pulled him into a room, where three men began to relentlessly interrogate him. They wanted to know why he had recently appeared on Russian TV and what, exactly, he intended to do at the government-controlled Area 51.
He told them the truth: He and his childhood friend, Eduards Nits, owned the world’s oldest McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, and they rose to internet fame as a result, explaining their bizarre appearance on a state-run television network that espouses political propaganda to millions of people. Eventually, one of the intimidating officials lost his composure and smirked. After the 45-minute-long ordeal, Dean was finally released.
“They realized that I’m legitimately just a drunk Aussie guy going to see his family at Area 51 who happens to have custody of the world's oldest burger,” he said matter-of-factly.
| Pedestrians walk past the window of a McDonald’s restaurant, 1992. |
Now, the American icon, fondly called Senior Burger, is about to turn 30 in November, and its loyal stewards across the globe staunchly believe it’s the oldest Quarter Pounder in existence. McDonald’s, however, hasn’t exactly been vocally supportive of it — and Dean and Nits are not the only people who claim to have a decades-old patty in their possession.
‘It’s no longer food’
To Dean and Nits’ fascination and amusement, Senior Burger, delicately wrapped in waxy beige paper, still looks perfectly frozen in time. It was never refrigerated, and it has spent the majority of its life cycle stuffed in cupboards, garbage bags and sheds. Despite its rough upbringing, it’s still “eerily intact” and hasn’t grown any mold or developed any foul odor, Dean says. He wasn’t kidding: Even though the burger and I are almost the exact same age, it’s arguably in much better condition.
“The only thing that’s happened is it’s shrunk in size,” Nits tells me one day over a video call.
| Casey Dean inspects the Senior Burger, which turns 30 this November. |
“It no longer looks like a hamburger,” he continued. “It’s no longer food. It just looks like artwork,” he added, explaining that he’d love for it to be in a gallery one day. At a glance, he and his accomplice look like they could pass off as outsider artists themselves: Dean, who works as a dog trainer and musician, has an enormous facial piercing and impish almond eyes, while Nits, a bricklayer in Adelaide who’s chatting with us from inside his car, has bushy gray mutton chops that make him look like a Civil War general. I notice a bright white light in the corner of Dean’s computer screen and realize that the burger is enclosed in a glass box behind him, where it’s being livestreamed on YouTube.
According to the two lifelong friends, neither of them intended on becoming caretakers for a decades-old burger. But fate, it seems, had other plans on that one particular evening back in 1995.
At the time, 14-year-old Dean won his local battle of the bands, earning a recording session as a prize, Nits explained. After working in the studio all day and going to a house party, Nits, Dean and their friend begged Nits’ sister to pull into the McDonald’s drive-thru. Their friend couldn’t finish eating his burger, Nits said, so he told them to hang on to it until the next time he visited. He never came back — but Nits was a man of his word, so he stuck to his promise regardless.
Weeks passed.
| Cars parked in front of a McDonald’s, 1994. |
Eventually, his mom begged him to throw out the stale burger that had been sitting on his desk for what felt like eternity — but her mischievous teenage son had other plans. “I put it in a box and shoved it in the cupboard so she wouldn’t find it,” he told me.
Slowly, it became a running joke, until it was reluctantly accepted as a part of the family. Years later, his mom, a teacher, took it to school to show her kids, and for a while, it was even nomadic: After Nits moved to Europe, his sister took half of his belongings, including the Quarter Pounder, which, by that point, had become a rock-solid disc. Because her husband was in the armed forces, they also had to relocate from one military base to the next every three years, “so the burger just followed them around Australia,” he said.
For now, though, it seems unlikely that the burger will receive formal recognition as the world’s oldest Quarter Pounder.
After reaching out to Guinness World Records for more information, a press representative told me that Guinness requires “evidence to prove a record breaking feat has been accomplished.” According to Dean and Nits, they were disqualified because they didn’t have the original receipt, which would have faded in just a few weeks anyway.
A quick Google search, however, shows that the beige cardboard ring indeed looks similar to McDonald’s burgers from the 1990s — and the Styrofoam packaging that’s currently archived at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Surely, the Smithsonian would be able to provide confirmation, I thought.
| A McDonald’s burger in its polystyrene takeaway box, June 1992. |
Much to my disappointment, museum representatives declined to speculate Senior Burger’s true age. “I am afraid that we do not collect actual food items and do not have a hamburger but rather empty packaging,” they wrote via email, adding that the clamshell container in the museum’s collection is from 1975-1990. At one point, Nits even contacted several universities asking them to carbon date it, but he was told that it was far too young: It had to be at least 5,000 years old.
Documentation aside, Dean is certain that the cardboard ring dates it back to 1990s Adelaide. “That’s better than any receipt, as far as we’re concerned,” he says. Microbiologists could probably assess the ominously orange cheddar cheese that’s still sticking to the cardboard ring like glue, too, he continued.
Intriguingly, while the item has gotten plenty of recognition on blogs and the back alleys of social media, legacy news outlets seem to be more cautious about shining a spotlight on the ageless Senior Burger.
Though Dean wouldn’t go into detail, he said that higher-ups at a major media outlet pulled a story about it last-minute “due to a conflict” with one of its sponsors, and the duo speculates that these orders could have “come from the golden arches,” Dean said.
| Intriguingly, while the item has gotten plenty of recognition on blogs and the back alleys of social media, legacy news outlets seem to be more cautious about shining a spotlight on the ageless Senior Burger. |
Looking at the petrified meat, it’s easy to see why a multibillion-dollar fast food empire wouldn’t want to publicly endorse it. After all, the ruthless waves of time are supposed to break down “real” food, thereby demonstrating its trustworthiness and authenticity. Dean and Nits aren’t the only ones who possess such an ungodly artifact, either.
‘It became lore in our family’
Thousands of miles away in the Texas heat, 69-year-old Melana Monroe is harboring an ancient relic. Well, ancient in fast food years, at least.
Nearly three decades ago, the grandmother and seminary worker bought a classic McDonald’s burger for, in her words, a science experiment. But she also “threw it in the trunk because the kids were mad at me” and she didn’t want them to smell it, she told me over Zoom. Then, like most legends are born, she simply forgot about it.
But Monroe’s life changed when her granddaughter, Alysen Sherburne, finally saw the legendary family heirloom for herself. So she did what most high schoolers would probably do in 2020: She made a video and posted it to TikTok. At the time, she had only about six followers on the app and didn’t anticipate getting much of a response, if at all. But when she woke up the next morning, it had over 2 million hits, gaining the attention of several news outlets across the country.
In August 2020 — just days after Sherburne’s video of her grandmother went viral — McDonald’s released a terse public response to the “myth that McDonald’s burgers do not decompose.”
“In the right environment, our burgers, like most other foods, could decompose,” it says, adding that moisture-free environments prevent the growth of mold or bacteria. “The burgers you are seeing are likely dried out and dehydrated, and by no means ‘the same as the day they were purchased.’” Kate Frugé, however, denies that her mother ever manipulated the burger.
“They kind of mean-tweeted us,” she told me with a laugh. And as long as these burgers remain in their possession — and the public continues to be fascinated by them — the narrative surrounding this so-called “myth” remains outside McDonald’s control. SFGATE reached out to the company multiple times, but press representatives did not respond by the time of publication.
According to Dean, Senior Burger’s story will be passed down for generations, too.
“It became lore in our family,” said Katie Frugé, her daughter, who grew up homeschooled. As a kid, she would show it off, until other local kids would ask to display it for their own science fair projects.
“It stayed in my closet for a long time,” Monroe said. “And a couple of times I would clean out my closet and go, ‘Why am I keeping this?’ And just about throw it away. And then I think, well, I don’t know. It’s like, 8 years old. I think I’ll keep it.”
| Despite McDonald’s claims, Kate Frugé, Melana Monroe’s daughter, denies that her mother ever manipulated the burger. |
He’s helping train Nits’ kids to become the next stewards, he tells me, and Sherburne, who works as a middle school teacher, says that her students will still bring up her TikTok in class. Every so often, it’ll gain attention on social media and make the rounds again, like an odd flower that refuses to stop blooming.
Overall, I can’t help but think about Aldous Huxley’s enduring theory that humans have always possessed “the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments,” and that this desire “has always been one of the principle appetites of the soul.” The two decades-old McDonald’s patties, it seems, have done just that. Even if fame and fortune don’t follow, for some, that’s enough.
“The burger belongs to American culture,” Frugé said. “It’s kind of an American icon.”
SOURCE:
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/strange-debate-worlds-oldest-mcdonalds-burgers-21114479.php
