When I was deployed, we had a dog at one of our checkpoints that would hang out and follow us. She would eat any MRE we gave her, except the Beef Stew MRE.

We watched this starving dog chomp down everything we gave her, and she had puppies. One sniff of the Beef Stew and she turned her head.

We collectively decided “I ain’t eatin that shit ever again.”

Please don't feed cats human food.

Even if they're shitbags.

being horrible food

This is the most upsetting of all. I worked a combined 4 years at various restaurants in the 90s (from styrofoam packaging to 'queueing' micro-wave eras), the last part while in college and needing a place where I could get long shifts and legal free food -- hint: Cool Runnings. It was maligned often, even then, but it was honest food, still -- it was mass-cooked, but it was beef and actual pickles and actual onions and real ketchup and such. People complain about it being oily or bland, and that's a taste thing we can't refute; but it was beef and bread and cheese, and that job and a bus pass got me most of the way through where rice and beans couldn't.

I don’t understand how McDonald’s was ever popular to begin with.

I agree with every single criticism of McDonald's that is in this discussion.

But my dude, let me tell you how delicious McDonald's was in the 70s and 80s. Their fries were less crispy than today, but OMFG I would have killed for them. The food was good. It was still fast food, it was never what you'd come up with if you cooked the same thing at home, but their burgers and fries were good. How good other stuff on the menu was is probably more of a mixed bag.

I might let someone have the tip of my pinky if they could magic a double cheeseburger and large McD's fries directly from 1979 onto my plate for dinner one time.

Over the decades they have changed ingredients and formulations in addition to (or in some cases because of, I'm sure) all of this corporate greed. What you eat today is not what we were enjoying back then, and I'm sure what we were enjoying back then was not as good as early McDonald's.

But it was at least cheap, fast, and reasonably enjoyable to eat for a time.

I used to have a cat who absolutely loved their French fries. He'd come and beg for them and try to steal them like a dog. When he managed to get one, he'd hold it in his little fist (he had pterodactyly) and eat it like a toddler.

like she was presenting a decayed corpse

I mean.. it quite literally is a ground up corpse. Given this is McDonald's, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a little decayed as well.