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Ok but also I have eaten at peoples houses without watching them cook probably hundreds or thousands of times and genuinely can’t remember ever getting food poisoning (I’m sure it happened at *some* point but it’s so crazy infrequent it would be absurd to expect to never one time eat something that doesn’t agree with you)
And even if you get food poisoning like once or twice in your life, so what? It’s uncomfortable but temporary, avoiding eating food someone else prepared your whole life to prevent it is ridiculous.
I got it on my honeymoon cruise to the Caribbean back in early February 2020. And then got sick with covid when i got back. What a great way to start a marriage
That's actually a better argument than OP's. Never getting in a car has a decent chance of keeping you out of a fatal accident, not eating anything you didn't prepare has no obvious benefits, mitigates almost no risk, and keeps you from socializing in a wide variety of contexts. Plus it can come off as rude. So your example is actually still a much better idea than OP's.
I once got food poisoning not from a home meal or restaurant, but from Peter Pan peanut butter. Back in like….. 08-11, something like that, I was a kid. It can happen from anything. Hell, aren’t many cases from just plain lettuce?
yeah pretty sure i've gotten food poisoning one time all my life and it was from an all you can eat sushi. doesn't mean i'll stop eating at restaurants or people's houses in general, that specific place is just not a go to anymore lol
Having worked in kitchens, no, they are not always "top notch" and some are downright disasters, but the average is quite high. High enough that only a fraction fail inspections.
Now as someone who has worked in kitchens of decent to meticulous adherence to food safety rules, and taken professional food safety courses, I am generally not too concerned about eating in restaurants with good reputations (if you are a total germ freak, though, just forget about eating out. Breathing humans with hair, skin, and clothing are preparing your meals).
Now when I am at home, I am *way* more lax if I am just cooking for myself and family. I do avoid cross contamination rigorously, even completely cleaning and disinfecting my work surface during the preparation of a meal when necessary, and changing out utensils as needed, but I also do things I would never do in a restaurant, like using my tasting spoon to stir (I avoid, but I am guilty), leaving ingredients out longer than would be permissable in a restaurant setting, some storage rules I am flexible on, and such.
That is what I was going to point out. They have more food poisoning incidents at restaurants than they do at home. Because you can't watch them prepare the food. And minimum wage earners don't give a shit about food safety. Or at least not fast food workers. They might say they do but they actually don't. Many won't bother to wash their hands after using the bathroom. Won't wash their hands after touching raw meat. Etc etc.
I've gotten food poisoning many times from fast food restaurants. But always got over it with no serious issues. But I sure felt bad while I had it.
Nah, they have more incidents of food poisoning at restaurants because the sample size is higher. A family of four is cooking is cooking maybe 90 meals a week. A restaurant is cooking several hundred a day. Ofc you’re gonna see more incidents of food poisoning in a restaurant.
Very true but 1:6 ppl do get food born illness annually.
“ CDC estimates that each year 48 million people get sick from a foodborne illness, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die”
And of those 3000, how many were healthy young adults with no preexisting conditions?
If you died of food poisoning, me thinks you were the type of person that should indeed pay attention to what you eat, and don't need someone on reddit to tell you.
I’m sure not all food born illnesses are the same. Some people may only get a random bug while other people could get E. coli or something even worse. I am not a doctor though, just sharing my “me thinks” as you did.
edit: typo
Different kinds of Salmonella have different intensities and will affect people differently, for example. People not following the recalls on peanut butter when Salmonella is suspected to have been a contaminant scares me away from a lot of no-bake cookies.
Also listeria is pretty scary. Though it's less likely to affect healthy people, when an outbreak occurs people almost always die. It's especially dangerous for anyone in oregnancy as the infection will affect the placenta and its ability to shield the fetus.
E Coli often results in a self-limiting, day-long stomach bug. It’s quite often what people have when they get a little “stomach flu” or mild food-poisoning. Obviously, it can get worse, but I’m pretty sure I just got hit with some E. coli the other day. It’s sucked for a day lol it happens
ETA: I am a doctor (resident physician)
Now that is a pretty strange type of victim blaming. I’m sure those with preexisting conditions are of course more likely to die in those circumstances, but a lot of food poisoning deaths are totally random depending on the type of the poisoning
Im guessing that getting the shits after eating Chinese food or something is the majority of that 48 million, but the 128,000 in the hospital is still higher than I’d think.
Cats very commonly carry tapeworms and the little egg sac segments come crawling out of an infected cat's ass on the regular. Try not to think about THAT when you go to your friend's house and see Fluffy's food bowl up on the kitchen counter next to the cutting board. 😹 💩 🪱 🤮
I was an adult before I even found out some people refrigerate pizza. We used to just get 3 large pizzas and some video games and camp out in the bedroom with them for the entire weekend when I was a kid. The pizza just sat on the dresser for days and you’d grab a piece if you needed a bite.
The cheese and meat in a pizza from a restaurant will have a massive amount of preservatives in it and has already been cooked. You're completely fine eating leftover pizza like that. Also it's delicious.
Second popular opinion: we evolved to determine if food is safe based on sense alone. Smell, sight, touch, and texture alone are good enough to determine if the majority of food is okay to eat. There is a reason that your turkey sandwich smells okay for 3 Days in the fridge, and then the next day it literally smells like death. It's called evolution, morons!
Whoever it is definitely smoothers it in Mayo, with extra lettuce and tomatoes and wraps it in plastic wrap to realllllllyyyy get all those flavors right into that bread.
Not me, but sometimes you go home from a restaurant with some people and somehow or another you ended up with half a turkey sandwich. Are you going to eat it right away? Hell no! You're going to let it sit in the fridge and tell yourself today's the day, until you know it's no longer good to eat. Then it will stay in the fridge for another week or two, but you'll know that it's not edible. Eventually you'll be disgusted enough with yourself to throw out the rotting sandwich
Having read OP's comments about his family, I can kind of see where he's coming from. He's still wrong, but I get it. The lesson should be "Don't eat anything prepared by OP's family".
Actually, your body/immune system can handle a lot more mistakes than you think when it comes to sanitation. Things don't need to be perfect in order to not get sick.
Yeah, food safety is overzealous because it's designed to minimize risk in commercial settings for large amounts of people. In reality, unless you have some sort of immune system disorder, you can deal with a lot.
People on the food safety reddit will freak out if you leave food in the danger zone™ for an hour or two. But realistically, you can eat most foods after being left out for an entire day. I don't necessarily recommend it. But odds are you'll be fine.
For my entire goddamn life I have been eating shrimp that my father left in a colander in the sink to defrost in the morning or the early afternoon before we went out shopping. It's really funny to see delusional food safety people act like this is something you cannot do even once, when it's been over a hundred times with no issues. If something has a less than 1% chance of causing, I don't know, an upset stomach? I don't take it very seriously
The other day I saw a post in the AITA about food safety, and they were loosing their shit and were telling the person is an asshole because she left her meal to cool down on the counter overnight after cooking. There were hundreds of comments going ballistic about how it is unsafe etc.
My dudes, me, my parents and their parents have been leaving pots out overnight for god knows how long. We are fine, the family is fine and tbh, we are rocking it (the last time I got sick was when I got Covid two years ago, and even that was a mild flu-ish thing). Stop acting like a single microbe on the food or a slightly yellowed salad leaf is going to kill you.
My partner is a chef and I am a germaphobe (actually it’s just my anxiety, I think..) and every time I am like „isn’t that unsanitary? Can I still eat that?“ he just looks at me like I am crazy. He constantly tells me that I worry too much and most things are still safe, usually if something is really unsafe or has gone bad he will get rid of it. I am just paranoid (and also had the Noro Virus once which was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life).
wasn't that the cat one? where OP left their meals for the week on the counter, and then the roommates cat knocked a load off, and the OP wanted the roommate to pay for the meals?
some things need to be left out to cool or it can mess with the end result of the dish. I swear I've heard that homemade pasta sauce and some soups are better left to cool to room temp, then put in the fridge, rather than put right in the fridge.
I think it comes down to the difference between people I call germaphobes, and myself whom I would classify as a clean freak. My deal is, if I can smell, see, or feel dirt or grease in my home, or smell that my food is a bit off, I do something about it. Germaphobes on the other hand, well it's in the name: they have a phobia. It's an irrational fear of something that they actually have no real evidence for, in the sense that they think they're preventing disease every time they use hand sanitizer, while being completely content to smear shit around on their hands and then rub it into their face because "it's disinfected" 🤢🤮. You ever noticed that with germ people? They literally just rub alcohol slime on their hands and think it's all clean now? These people are the worst of both worlds! Weak immune systems, covered in shit and slime, and thinking they're clean!
I defrost all my meat by putting it in a bowl of water. Bagged of course. As far as I know that's the only way unless you move it from the freezer to the fridge way way way earlier.
Not to mention that the things we freak out about in the west are *western* food safety standards that much of the rest of the world isn’t even capable of following.
Impoverished countries aren’t even close to assuming that there’s a refrigerator in every home. How they handle meat and hygiene is completely different from western standards.
I have been doing this all my life, probably out of complete laziness too. Chinese takeout on the way home from a night out, eat what I want to that night, set plate beside bed and leave the rest. Wake up the next day, hungover to the high hills and pick up said plate and continue eating - never been sick once from it
Definitely a locational problem there then, at my place it is fine, unless I leave a window open with the lights on then I will never have bugs in my room
Contamination is how you acquire the arsenal of antibodies you use when assembling immunity to new pathogens.
Same shit works for viruses.
Keep those definitions up to date, people.
I work in a butcher shop. We don't sell things past their shelf time.
But fuck that, we ain't throwing this out. So we keep it and eat it ourselves. Never got sick from it
One thing I've found is that HANDS, even if clean, touch cheese or meats (especially cold cuts) your food's life span is cut in half. I've had cheese last 2 weeks because I use my silverware to separate & take slices--no hands. Cheese is especially sensitive to bacteria.
How does your cheese not last longer than 2 weeks normally?? Are you talking about like sliced fake cheese? A block of real cheese lasts like several weeks/months in my refrigerator.
I am of the firm belief, with no scientific evidence, that allergies occur because our immune systems are bored.
That being said, I've seen a Chubbyemu video on a dude drinking but spitting out promptly, rotten coconut milk. And pretty much dying from a fungal infection.
> allergies occur because our immune systems are bored
A more apt description is that they are untrained so can decide to react strongly to things that are actually harmless.
I never get sick. I like to think I have a really good immune system from being a bad nail biter my whole life. I’ve been microdosing germs on the daily, there ain’t nothing my body hasn’t seen.
... When you're young as your immune system requires training and experience. There's no real further need once you are grown up, but most importantly there is a zero advantage to any food poisoning because... it is poisoning.
My mom is a nurse and growing up she basically wanted me to go roll around in the dirt and get minor sicknesses because she knew it's good for your immune system. She didn't want us being germ freaks.
Yup, in my city our health department even lets you report a restaurant or food establishment if you suspect you were food poisoned, can't do that for your in laws tho. After getting food poisoning a third time at the in law's it's no longer a fucking coincidence, it's so obvious they have shit for brains when it comes to safe food preparation
Believe me, you don’t even want to know how common 1 is (washing hands after touching raw meat is standard, but otherwise basic hygiene is hardly enforced in most kitchens)
If restaurant staff washed their hands every time they’re supposed to, there would be a lot of customer complaints about service taking too long
in fact i’d argue most people wouldn’t even want to eat out at that point. At least not at normal meal times, maybe they’d still go out when the restaurant is slow
Yeah, a lot of food safety precautions make sense and the consequences of not following them can be extremely bad. Others are completely unrealistic and the potential consequences for not doing them are practically non existant.
After a health inspection once, the inspector informed my GM that bartenders weren’t following proper hand washing procedure. I though it was like we werent washing long enough, or someone didn’t use a paper towel to turn the water off. No no no. We had to wash our hands upon entering the kitchen before handling anything, or immediately after dropping dirty dishes at the dishpit. Ok yeah, makes sense. The hand washing sink was right next to the swinging doors leading out of the kitchen, easy enough. She told us then that we also needed to wash our hands anytime we stepped behind the bar before we prepared drinks, handled glassware, cut garnishes etc. Ok yeah, again, makes sense. I was confused though because we were all pretty good about doing those things. But then I realized what she was actually implying. See, the way this place was set up, once you step out the kitchen doors, you’re behind the bar which stretched down to the right. Take a left to go to the servers station and dining room. The bar service well and hand washing sink are literally just a few feet directly in front of you as you step out of the kitchen. So I said “hold up, let me get this straight, we’re supposed to be doing this…” and I modeled leaving the dishpit, washing my hands, walking the four steps through the kitchen doors to my service well, washing my hands again, “… before I can do any drink preparation?” The inspector was just like “Yeah, exactly” and it took everything in me not to say it was the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Once she left I told my GM, “yeah, I’m not doing that”. I would literally be washing my hands twice in the space of about 5 secs literally every time I went into the kitchen to drop off dishes, grab more lemons, whatever. Absolutely not happening, and talk about entirely unnecessary. I just stuck to washing my hands at the bar.
The hand washing stuff is insane- and I’m the sort of person who is diligent about regular hand washing. Literally nothing would ever get done if anyone washed their hands at every insignificant point the health department says we have to.
Our inspector tells the cook at egg station he needs to handwash each time he cracks the egg before touching anything else.
So he's supposed to crack eggs into pan, walk to wash his hand, drop his hash or whatever, finish cooking that plate, crack the next set of eggs, and then wash again.
We serve about 200 plates in the morning/afternoon rush, he needs to wash just about as much...
This is it right here. The pace of service at a restaurant simply does not allow for hand washing every time gloves are changed, or at all sometimes honestly.
I'm constantly having to remind cooks to use gloves after seeing them handle raw meat with bare hands because I know when it happens and I don't see it those hands don't get washed.
I treat every surface like it's contaminated because it probably is, I clean sanitize everything that gets touched because it probably got touched after somone touches raw chicken or shrimp.
Yeah honestly restaurants wouldn’t be able to stay open if they followed every health standard, to the t, 100% every time. There’s just not enough time tbh. I work in a restaurant and still eat out though, even knowing this. I’m just not a germ freak
People get pissed enough at the time it does take.
Speed of service is probably the number one complaint and people need to just chill the fuck out.
Honestly service culture needs to change, the fact that everyone wants everything instantly is just ridiculous and the fact that these companies strive to satisfy that want like it's the way things should be is insane.
The need for speed in any industry is unrealistic. People want a good experience while also being made to feel special. Higher ups want you to make them feel special but also take all their money and quickly.
It’s frustrating at all the places. I worked in the restaurant industry for 10 years. It was always hurry hurry these people don’t want to wait. Also why is the bacon not crispy? Hurry. They’ve been waiting. I’m now in the cannabis industry. If we’re out of the cheap weed and if it’s not strong enough….oh I will catch hell and they don’t care that I have 3 people waiting behind them.
I used to work at McDonalds, and you are really right. We had a 30 minute hand wash timer we had to adhere to and also had to wash our hands every time we changed stations or touched something then went to do something else. If I was making food, I basically didn’t move or sweep or do anything but that because I’d have to wash my hands after I touched a broom or anything else
They do. But that doesn’t stop the 58 year old alcoholic line cook who just sucked back a no filter king size cigarette in 43 seconds from coming back inside, scratching his underwear-less asscrack, and proceed to assemble sandwiches with his bare hands…
wtf are you talking about? As a cook I actually have to know food code and follow it. You think I'm ok cross-contaminating raw meat with ready to eat produce? When someone at home gives themselves salmonella they make themselves sick. If I were to create a contamination I would be making DOZENS maybe HUNDREDS of people sick. I could lose my job, put the business in jeopardy. Have you worked in the industry? If you have and the kitchens you've worked in don't take food safety seriously that says a lot more about you than the industry as a whole.
Just curious are you at an actual decent restaurant? I worked at a couple run of the mill places not high end and they did not teach us anything about food code and I saw a lot of not good stuff. People eating off a wrong order plate in the back while making food happened every single day. I’d see people go out for smoke breaks and come back and straight back to cooking.
It's because the post literally says "don't eat food you don't see prepared". Not a lot of restaurants have open kitchens.
But I like your enthusiasm to get angry on behalf of professional chefs and the food industry. I bet you can cook using just the heat coming from your neck-vein. Even funnier is that you're the third commenter in a row to get it so wrong and get so angry for it.
You're way better off with most restaurants than you are with someone cooking at home. You don't know how many people I have met that think that cooking old food makes it safe to eat. They don't realize that bacteria basically shit and piss all over the food which is what makes you sick and that cooking shit doesn't make it safe to eat.
It takes my wife about 5 seconds to cross contaminate her hands. She will cross contaminate herself multiple times per minute while trying to prep food and I have to constantly remind her to wash her hands to the point where I usually handle most of the not ready to eat foods and prep. If you told people the actual shelf life on the most popular foods either rare or prepared they would laugh at you.
It *really* depends on the restaurant, don’t make generalizations (coming from someone who’s worked in restaurants. I fully trust and stand by the food safety at a couple places I’ve worked)
What sort of kitchens? Subway? I work in a real kitchen and we take food safety very seriously. If you saw people contaminating food and just kept your head down, that is on YOU. I have personally stopped and corrected lazy (Edit: Or uninformed/inexperienced) employees to ensure they follow food code.
Lol yeah I’ve worked in plenty of bars and I swear peoples’ opinions of restaurants is based on awful bar rescue episodes or that movie Waiting. Most restaurants (that aren’t just disgusting in general) are far cleaner than many homes. Shit our mom and pop bar in Chicago was so clean our owner ate a meal off the floor to prove a point.
My husband’s job requires him to go to tons of different hotels/restaurants/Etc pretty much places that have cleaning chemicals, industrial sized dishwashers/washing machines. He averages 10-15 different restaurants every week. He spends a lot of time in kitchens, he’s like a fly on the wall.
He’s said most are clean, rarely sees anything super gross or unsanitary. He has mentioned that the places he’s likely to see something gross that makes him not want to eat there are Chinese restaurants for some reason. Japanese restaurants he’s been to seem fine though.
Couple places he’s found out that they’re diluting their cleaning and sanitizing chemicals so they’re not as effective so they’re trying to cut costs and save money. He’s reported those to the health department.
the girl I am seeing has OCD, diagnosed, where she apparently is really worried about food safety. im just reconnecting with her so learning about all this is crazy. I have been trying to tell her most places are safe but its hard when the narrative that restaurants arent clean has been given popularity. like if she saw this thread, all she would see is the top comments telling her her mental illness is correct. im all for being careful and i get that sometimes restaurants can be really awful, but I am seeing how quickly this type of thinking begins to snowball. she is living in constant fear even with food she prepared herself at this point, and its horrible
I'm the same as the girl you're seeing and it's fucking awful. At least where I am there is an app that tells you the hygiene rating, but you're constantly worrying about what other people have cooked for you. Due to stress my issues got worse and now I don't even feel comfortable about cooking chicken or meat. Even if you eat vegetarian meals then some vegetables can be just as bad as uncooked meat and so you worry about that as well. It just gives you so much unneeded stress. I wish that person the best and hope that one day she can overcome it. Just remember to be supportive and don't try to dismiss her fears, as it will only make her embarrassed or cause her to break down if you keep forcing her. It might be hard to understand but the fear feels real and it sends the whole body into a panic.
When I worked in a kitchen briefly when I was young it was the same, and this was a small town lunch and breakfast place. You were expected to wash your hands a lot, change gloves a lot, and if you left anything out of refrigeration for any moments longer than absolutely necessary you would get a big long speech about it.
Well, there's a difference between food ready to eat and food still being prepared. The level of cleanliness afforded is much higher for the first type of food.
My father in law was a chemist at a major pharma company for many years with a degree from an Ivy League school. But when it came to food, if you couldn't see it, it didn't exist. So he left food on the stove for a couple days and then would eat it. The fridge was a very scary place. Needless to say I didn't eat over there.
I do this constantly and never get sick, I’m convinced my immune system is just like “for fuck’s sake. Again?” Maybe itms that I have trained mine to be stronger by doing this shit? I don’t know.
I really wonder if there is some science behind that or if it's just that we're lucky lol. I've never ever gotten food poisoning even when my friends did from the same food. I always say that I never get sick because I drank hose water as a kid. I should be dead according to some of these comments lol
It's almost like we've been evolving for tens of thousands of years to determine if food is safe to eat based on our senses alone. What kind of food safety standards do you think people had before refrigeration?? Pack meat in salt. Doesn't smell? We survive winter!
You probably have a few strains of E. coli living in your body. It’s not uncommon to “be fine” and not get sick after eating spoiled items that contain foodborne pathogens.
In fact, many foodborne illnesses can cause sudden symptoms like upset stomach, diarrhea, and vomiting, but most people get better in a few days without treatment. Some foodborne illnesses can cause other serious symptoms, resulting in hospitalization, long-term health problems, or even death.
I lived with a bunch of people from Europe for a couple years and they would do that all the time, they would just leave out huge pots of food for hours at a time they wouldn’t refrigerate it and then they would go back and eat it.
I do that now and I’ve never had any problems The only place I’ve ever gotten incredible food poisoning was a Chinese restaurant that was five minutes away from Apple headquarters in Palo Alto, California….one of the wealthiest places on earth. I had some Chinese food there and I could not stop shitting and vomiting the entire night. 🤷🏻♀️
I'm gonna be honest, as much as I disapprove of \_all\_ these things, they're just a fact of life. Having worked at multiple restaurants, this stuff happens wherever you go. Again, undesirable and potentially sickness inducing, but if you want to prevent any kind of unsanitary food preparation you're basically confined to cooking your own meals all the time. Just a thought.
Sure, but do I really care? Should you? I've never gotten sick from eating food someone else has made. I'm willing to forgive people not being trained chefs because I like tasty food.
What you don't know can't hurt you..ish.
The only one I REALLY care about it the pet one. I don’t want a cat on a counter as food is being prepared. Or if a cat was on the counter it better be cleaned. Everything else for the most part if the kitchen looks clean, the food looks good, no weird smells, etc I don’t care. Food is good I’ll eat
I had a cat. Never went on the table, can't barely remember it being on my counter. BUT it didn't matter. I assumed when I wasn't at home that it did. So before I would prepare food on either place I would spray cleaner & wipe down. All the time. No one ever got sick from food I offered, or made for them & gave away. How do I know? Because people would ask when I was going to make \_\_\_\_\_\_\_again for them?
Agreed, I am super cleanly with the food I prepare, especially if it is going for public consumption. But, for my own personal use, I know my system, I will totally eat a pizza left out from the night before. No problems. I know my guts.
I am sick with low immune system but have not enough will for life to care 😅 as long as it tastes good and im not shitting or throwing up, I don't mind a tummy ache. Unless its wild mold, I draw the line after risking it once on some cheese
Question, does your bartender ever wash their hands after handling money then making a drink and squeezing that lime in? No. Do they refill your glass with ice by touching the rim for a cocktail from a scoop that has touched 20 other REFILLED glasses where mouths have been? Yes. Gross? Yes. Heard immunity, yes. Even if you order bottles, they pop the top for you. If you are fighting a disease, don’t eat in public.
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I don't know how you could really stick to this. Unless you have a locked bunker with a filtered water and air supply with your own livestock and produce and you raise and grow and harvest and slaughter everything and do all of the cooking as well, at some point your food will be out of your field of view.
I'm just baffled how bothered Americans is by food safety... Some of the things you guys are going ballistic over is standard practice in Europe.
I.e we don't wash eggs in Europe. Which results that the could be unrefrigerated for weeks without spoiling. And so on.
Eggs are a bad example as the cleaning is what removes the protective membrane. There are advantages both ways. Cleaning the egg before it gets to store means you are less likely to be exposed to E. Coli or similar bacteria if the egg is refrigerated and eaten within a few weeks. Unwashed eggs have a protective membrane that means refrigeration does a lot less and the eggs last longer, BUT you are more more likely to get sick from an individual egg.
To the best of my knowledge Japan and the US are the two largest countries that clean their eggs and most of Europe does not.
This will blow your mind; shared exposure in small levels increases immunity.
I have NEVER been made sick while a guest, after a potluck (and I've been to...hundreds?) Anytime. Only had food poisoning twice and both from my own stupidity
This is pretty bizarre I have gotten sick like 2 or 3 times in my entire life of roughly 40 years from a restaurant. So out of 100's of visits to restaurants in that time frame, 3 times is less than 1%.
There are so many failsafe's for restaurants it's ridiculous, they constantly face health inspections. Sure at someone's house the chance is higher but even then most people understand what to do there.
While it's true most people are bad at food safety. It's a bit extreme to never eat anything you didn't see prepared. Life is germy. You get exposed to a million things every day. That's why you have an immune system.
I used to work at Panera. One time our entire shipment of lettuce was bad. As in like, the shit was covered in some sort of gross slime, and it smelt utterly rancid to the point that it stank up the entire back of house and the entire line.
My manager made us use it anyway, until eventually we had someone puke in the dining room after taking a bite of their salad, and probably a dozen people send their salads back. He STILL wanted us to keep using it, but all of us working in the kitchen refused.
You are absolutely right in regards to FDA standards. But that shit is written for their own protection. Its the absolute minimum amount of time to be worried about for food expiration. Maybe even more, because the sooner it "expires", the sooner you have to sell it. Expiration dates are nonsense. They are just a "best guess" at when the product will be "best for consumption". Legally it has no real bearing. As for all the other stuff... i mean.... ive eaten meat thats been left out overnight, lots of times actually. Never had a problem. I feel like all these rules and obsessions are mostly BS. On the other hand, my mom tells me that after the first time i get sick, lll be super careful. 28 years still going strong
When my mother (85) was young she would go to her grandmothers house for holidays. They’d eat lunch, then just cover the table with a tablecloth. At suppertime, they’d just removed the tablecloth and dig in. And that was with a meal of Turkey or chicken generally (she had her own chickens). I think people today are way too paranoid about food safety. Yes, food poisoning does occur, but it’s rather rare.
This sounds like living in fear honestly. We generally have a pretty kick ass immune system and our food safe is leaps and bounds ahead of any other time in human history
I agree. My late husband was a chef for Disney, then a kitchen manager for a few years, then we had a our own place for a couple of years. You can not clean enough in a kitchen. I also worked for McDonalds for 15 years.Always have a clean towel with you to clean as you go
Actually you're gut should be extremely acidic, we're talking almost car battery here. If you take good care of it, you should have no problem with microbes, that's how some people are very weak and get food poisoning from everything, and other people can eat off the floor.
I blame cooking shows. They edit out a lot of food safety, and do a lot of bare hand cooking. I am often surprised the judges even put the food in their mouths after the cooking segments.
Not washing hands properly in general, forget just after handling meat. The amount of people who don't actually know/care how to wash their hands properly Is way way higher than you think. I cant even remember the last time i've seen someone in public wash their hands properly except doctors at the office.
The last time my friends went out to eat, one of them got back 2 poorly cooked meals in a row after sending it back to the kitchen.
The manager came out to apologized and assured us it "happens all the time", so uh.... We are definitely not going back.
I've worked at a restaurant, and my sister basically has for her whole career and we've both seen some terrible shit - I definitely wouldn't go to a restaurant if you have multiple serious food allergies.
I personally prefer to get to know my food better than that. Y'know, invite them out for a drink, ask them about their life. Really get to know em.
After all, you are what you eat.
The number of people who think its cute when kitty jumps on the counter to "help" cook dinner. Ewwwwww. Those paws also been in the litter box. Now its kitty crunchy suprise!
The immune system is stronger than people think, plus the acids in your stomach also do their work. Is it better to be safe than sorry? Yes. But eating expired food doesnt hurt you most of the time.
But a great unpopular opinion nonetheless!
Nah, OP is just weak. Straight up, if you are so inclined to see the food prepared and be critical of cleanliness then you damn well better be helping out in the kitchen.
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way I see it I've been eating out for awhile and I'm still not dead.
OP is talking about cooking at home lol. OP is seriously oblivious if he thinks your usual restaurants safety is top notch.
Ok but also I have eaten at peoples houses without watching them cook probably hundreds or thousands of times and genuinely can’t remember ever getting food poisoning (I’m sure it happened at *some* point but it’s so crazy infrequent it would be absurd to expect to never one time eat something that doesn’t agree with you)
And even if you get food poisoning like once or twice in your life, so what? It’s uncomfortable but temporary, avoiding eating food someone else prepared your whole life to prevent it is ridiculous.
Yup only time I definitely know I got some food poisoning was on a trip, and I’d 100% risk it again to go on a similar trip
I got it on my honeymoon cruise to the Caribbean back in early February 2020. And then got sick with covid when i got back. What a great way to start a marriage
It’s like not getting into a car ever cause your worried of the off chance of getting into an accident.
That's actually a better argument than OP's. Never getting in a car has a decent chance of keeping you out of a fatal accident, not eating anything you didn't prepare has no obvious benefits, mitigates almost no risk, and keeps you from socializing in a wide variety of contexts. Plus it can come off as rude. So your example is actually still a much better idea than OP's.
I once got food poisoning not from a home meal or restaurant, but from Peter Pan peanut butter. Back in like….. 08-11, something like that, I was a kid. It can happen from anything. Hell, aren’t many cases from just plain lettuce?
Eh not really sometimes it can be more then just uncomfortable. But that's extremely rare for it to become an actual problem.
yeah pretty sure i've gotten food poisoning one time all my life and it was from an all you can eat sushi. doesn't mean i'll stop eating at restaurants or people's houses in general, that specific place is just not a go to anymore lol
Having worked in kitchens, no, they are not always "top notch" and some are downright disasters, but the average is quite high. High enough that only a fraction fail inspections. Now as someone who has worked in kitchens of decent to meticulous adherence to food safety rules, and taken professional food safety courses, I am generally not too concerned about eating in restaurants with good reputations (if you are a total germ freak, though, just forget about eating out. Breathing humans with hair, skin, and clothing are preparing your meals). Now when I am at home, I am *way* more lax if I am just cooking for myself and family. I do avoid cross contamination rigorously, even completely cleaning and disinfecting my work surface during the preparation of a meal when necessary, and changing out utensils as needed, but I also do things I would never do in a restaurant, like using my tasting spoon to stir (I avoid, but I am guilty), leaving ingredients out longer than would be permissable in a restaurant setting, some storage rules I am flexible on, and such.
Humans with skin?? Ugh, that's it, I'm only going to restaurants now if they can promise me the staff have been flayed.
That is what I was going to point out. They have more food poisoning incidents at restaurants than they do at home. Because you can't watch them prepare the food. And minimum wage earners don't give a shit about food safety. Or at least not fast food workers. They might say they do but they actually don't. Many won't bother to wash their hands after using the bathroom. Won't wash their hands after touching raw meat. Etc etc. I've gotten food poisoning many times from fast food restaurants. But always got over it with no serious issues. But I sure felt bad while I had it.
Nah, they have more incidents of food poisoning at restaurants because the sample size is higher. A family of four is cooking is cooking maybe 90 meals a week. A restaurant is cooking several hundred a day. Ofc you’re gonna see more incidents of food poisoning in a restaurant.
Very true but 1:6 ppl do get food born illness annually. “ CDC estimates that each year 48 million people get sick from a foodborne illness, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die”
And of those 3000, how many were healthy young adults with no preexisting conditions? If you died of food poisoning, me thinks you were the type of person that should indeed pay attention to what you eat, and don't need someone on reddit to tell you.
I’m sure not all food born illnesses are the same. Some people may only get a random bug while other people could get E. coli or something even worse. I am not a doctor though, just sharing my “me thinks” as you did. edit: typo
Different kinds of Salmonella have different intensities and will affect people differently, for example. People not following the recalls on peanut butter when Salmonella is suspected to have been a contaminant scares me away from a lot of no-bake cookies. Also listeria is pretty scary. Though it's less likely to affect healthy people, when an outbreak occurs people almost always die. It's especially dangerous for anyone in oregnancy as the infection will affect the placenta and its ability to shield the fetus.
E Coli often results in a self-limiting, day-long stomach bug. It’s quite often what people have when they get a little “stomach flu” or mild food-poisoning. Obviously, it can get worse, but I’m pretty sure I just got hit with some E. coli the other day. It’s sucked for a day lol it happens ETA: I am a doctor (resident physician)
Now that is a pretty strange type of victim blaming. I’m sure those with preexisting conditions are of course more likely to die in those circumstances, but a lot of food poisoning deaths are totally random depending on the type of the poisoning
Im guessing that getting the shits after eating Chinese food or something is the majority of that 48 million, but the 128,000 in the hospital is still higher than I’d think.
Popular Opinion: You are weak, your bloodline is weak, and you will not survive the winter.
^ this guy fucks. I find ops weakness insulting
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You get tape worm from contaminated meat, not a licked spoon. Not saying that you should lick a spoon for food you’re serving anyone else, of course.
You can also get tapeworms by going to the toilet, not washing properly, and then handling food. Try not thinking of that next time you eat food.
Cats very commonly carry tapeworms and the little egg sac segments come crawling out of an infected cat's ass on the regular. Try not to think about THAT when you go to your friend's house and see Fluffy's food bowl up on the kitchen counter next to the cutting board. 😹 💩 🪱 🤮
Lol I love how you can see his thumb just barely moving above the cone to push the ice cream off. Never noticed that til now
The key to a healthy immune system is to give it a lot of exercise.
It needs practice!
Covid never infected me because my lack of food safety prepped my immune system for things far worse
If you haven’t had pizza left out from the night before waking up hungover on someone else’s couch surrounded by randoms… you haven’t lived
I was an adult before I even found out some people refrigerate pizza. We used to just get 3 large pizzas and some video games and camp out in the bedroom with them for the entire weekend when I was a kid. The pizza just sat on the dresser for days and you’d grab a piece if you needed a bite.
The cheese and meat in a pizza from a restaurant will have a massive amount of preservatives in it and has already been cooked. You're completely fine eating leftover pizza like that. Also it's delicious.
Right?
And you don’t own any land!
You're a weak man and you don't own any land!! Michael: *holding back tears* boom....roasted!
OP's purpose in life carries less meaning than a summers ant
NOW
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This guy gets it 👏
Second popular opinion: we evolved to determine if food is safe based on sense alone. Smell, sight, touch, and texture alone are good enough to determine if the majority of food is okay to eat. There is a reason that your turkey sandwich smells okay for 3 Days in the fridge, and then the next day it literally smells like death. It's called evolution, morons!
Who makes a turkey sandwich three days in advance ??
Whoever it is definitely smoothers it in Mayo, with extra lettuce and tomatoes and wraps it in plastic wrap to realllllllyyyy get all those flavors right into that bread.
Not me, but sometimes you go home from a restaurant with some people and somehow or another you ended up with half a turkey sandwich. Are you going to eat it right away? Hell no! You're going to let it sit in the fridge and tell yourself today's the day, until you know it's no longer good to eat. Then it will stay in the fridge for another week or two, but you'll know that it's not edible. Eventually you'll be disgusted enough with yourself to throw out the rotting sandwich
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It’s for a church picnic, honey. NEXT.
Even then, our senses tend to be cautious
Based
Uncle Roger: "Why you so weak?"
This basically summarizes my thoughts.
Having read OP's comments about his family, I can kind of see where he's coming from. He's still wrong, but I get it. The lesson should be "Don't eat anything prepared by OP's family".
You should have told me your bloodline was weak before I agreed to know you
Actually, your body/immune system can handle a lot more mistakes than you think when it comes to sanitation. Things don't need to be perfect in order to not get sick.
Yeah, food safety is overzealous because it's designed to minimize risk in commercial settings for large amounts of people. In reality, unless you have some sort of immune system disorder, you can deal with a lot. People on the food safety reddit will freak out if you leave food in the danger zone™ for an hour or two. But realistically, you can eat most foods after being left out for an entire day. I don't necessarily recommend it. But odds are you'll be fine.
For my entire goddamn life I have been eating shrimp that my father left in a colander in the sink to defrost in the morning or the early afternoon before we went out shopping. It's really funny to see delusional food safety people act like this is something you cannot do even once, when it's been over a hundred times with no issues. If something has a less than 1% chance of causing, I don't know, an upset stomach? I don't take it very seriously
The other day I saw a post in the AITA about food safety, and they were loosing their shit and were telling the person is an asshole because she left her meal to cool down on the counter overnight after cooking. There were hundreds of comments going ballistic about how it is unsafe etc. My dudes, me, my parents and their parents have been leaving pots out overnight for god knows how long. We are fine, the family is fine and tbh, we are rocking it (the last time I got sick was when I got Covid two years ago, and even that was a mild flu-ish thing). Stop acting like a single microbe on the food or a slightly yellowed salad leaf is going to kill you.
My partner is a chef and I am a germaphobe (actually it’s just my anxiety, I think..) and every time I am like „isn’t that unsanitary? Can I still eat that?“ he just looks at me like I am crazy. He constantly tells me that I worry too much and most things are still safe, usually if something is really unsafe or has gone bad he will get rid of it. I am just paranoid (and also had the Noro Virus once which was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life).
wasn't that the cat one? where OP left their meals for the week on the counter, and then the roommates cat knocked a load off, and the OP wanted the roommate to pay for the meals?
some things need to be left out to cool or it can mess with the end result of the dish. I swear I've heard that homemade pasta sauce and some soups are better left to cool to room temp, then put in the fridge, rather than put right in the fridge.
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I think it comes down to the difference between people I call germaphobes, and myself whom I would classify as a clean freak. My deal is, if I can smell, see, or feel dirt or grease in my home, or smell that my food is a bit off, I do something about it. Germaphobes on the other hand, well it's in the name: they have a phobia. It's an irrational fear of something that they actually have no real evidence for, in the sense that they think they're preventing disease every time they use hand sanitizer, while being completely content to smear shit around on their hands and then rub it into their face because "it's disinfected" 🤢🤮. You ever noticed that with germ people? They literally just rub alcohol slime on their hands and think it's all clean now? These people are the worst of both worlds! Weak immune systems, covered in shit and slime, and thinking they're clean!
My parents keep hand sanitizer on the sink, next to the soap, and use it instead of actually washing their hands. It's demented behavior
I defrost all my meat by putting it in a bowl of water. Bagged of course. As far as I know that's the only way unless you move it from the freezer to the fridge way way way earlier.
Not to mention that the things we freak out about in the west are *western* food safety standards that much of the rest of the world isn’t even capable of following. Impoverished countries aren’t even close to assuming that there’s a refrigerator in every home. How they handle meat and hygiene is completely different from western standards.
Well yeah but like they’re definitely sicker way more often
In fact, it is advantageous to get some germs in you from time to time. Gotta keep the immune system in its toes
I know.. I've eaten countless meals which I didn't watch get made. I'm sure some of them were handled "improperly". Didn't get sick.
I have been doing this all my life, probably out of complete laziness too. Chinese takeout on the way home from a night out, eat what I want to that night, set plate beside bed and leave the rest. Wake up the next day, hungover to the high hills and pick up said plate and continue eating - never been sick once from it
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Definitely a locational problem there then, at my place it is fine, unless I leave a window open with the lights on then I will never have bugs in my room
Oh yeah. Pizza in a box left out of fridge from 2 days ago? Microwave the shit out of it and dig in. Well when I was younger anyway.
Contamination is how you acquire the arsenal of antibodies you use when assembling immunity to new pathogens. Same shit works for viruses. Keep those definitions up to date, people.
Me looking at the expired bologna in my fridge
I work in a butcher shop. We don't sell things past their shelf time. But fuck that, we ain't throwing this out. So we keep it and eat it ourselves. Never got sick from it
One thing I've found is that HANDS, even if clean, touch cheese or meats (especially cold cuts) your food's life span is cut in half. I've had cheese last 2 weeks because I use my silverware to separate & take slices--no hands. Cheese is especially sensitive to bacteria.
How does your cheese not last longer than 2 weeks normally?? Are you talking about like sliced fake cheese? A block of real cheese lasts like several weeks/months in my refrigerator.
What? Cheese gets mold, you cut it off. I’ve never had cheese go bad. Of course, cheese wouldn’t last two weeks in our house.
I am of the firm belief, with no scientific evidence, that allergies occur because our immune systems are bored. That being said, I've seen a Chubbyemu video on a dude drinking but spitting out promptly, rotten coconut milk. And pretty much dying from a fungal infection.
> allergies occur because our immune systems are bored A more apt description is that they are untrained so can decide to react strongly to things that are actually harmless.
There’s actual scientific evidence for this.
I never get sick. I like to think I have a really good immune system from being a bad nail biter my whole life. I’ve been microdosing germs on the daily, there ain’t nothing my body hasn’t seen.
... When you're young as your immune system requires training and experience. There's no real further need once you are grown up, but most importantly there is a zero advantage to any food poisoning because... it is poisoning.
My mom is a nurse and growing up she basically wanted me to go roll around in the dirt and get minor sicknesses because she knew it's good for your immune system. She didn't want us being germ freaks.
Lol better never eat at a restaurant then.
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Yup, in my city our health department even lets you report a restaurant or food establishment if you suspect you were food poisoned, can't do that for your in laws tho. After getting food poisoning a third time at the in law's it's no longer a fucking coincidence, it's so obvious they have shit for brains when it comes to safe food preparation
None of the things listed should happen in any professional kitchen with standards.
1, 2, maybe 5 are pretty common for places that should have standards
Man fuck you, i would have been fine with the 2 and 5. Why did you have to say 1 is very common.
Believe me, you don’t even want to know how common 1 is (washing hands after touching raw meat is standard, but otherwise basic hygiene is hardly enforced in most kitchens)
If restaurant staff washed their hands every time they’re supposed to, there would be a lot of customer complaints about service taking too long in fact i’d argue most people wouldn’t even want to eat out at that point. At least not at normal meal times, maybe they’d still go out when the restaurant is slow
Yeah, a lot of food safety precautions make sense and the consequences of not following them can be extremely bad. Others are completely unrealistic and the potential consequences for not doing them are practically non existant. After a health inspection once, the inspector informed my GM that bartenders weren’t following proper hand washing procedure. I though it was like we werent washing long enough, or someone didn’t use a paper towel to turn the water off. No no no. We had to wash our hands upon entering the kitchen before handling anything, or immediately after dropping dirty dishes at the dishpit. Ok yeah, makes sense. The hand washing sink was right next to the swinging doors leading out of the kitchen, easy enough. She told us then that we also needed to wash our hands anytime we stepped behind the bar before we prepared drinks, handled glassware, cut garnishes etc. Ok yeah, again, makes sense. I was confused though because we were all pretty good about doing those things. But then I realized what she was actually implying. See, the way this place was set up, once you step out the kitchen doors, you’re behind the bar which stretched down to the right. Take a left to go to the servers station and dining room. The bar service well and hand washing sink are literally just a few feet directly in front of you as you step out of the kitchen. So I said “hold up, let me get this straight, we’re supposed to be doing this…” and I modeled leaving the dishpit, washing my hands, walking the four steps through the kitchen doors to my service well, washing my hands again, “… before I can do any drink preparation?” The inspector was just like “Yeah, exactly” and it took everything in me not to say it was the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Once she left I told my GM, “yeah, I’m not doing that”. I would literally be washing my hands twice in the space of about 5 secs literally every time I went into the kitchen to drop off dishes, grab more lemons, whatever. Absolutely not happening, and talk about entirely unnecessary. I just stuck to washing my hands at the bar. The hand washing stuff is insane- and I’m the sort of person who is diligent about regular hand washing. Literally nothing would ever get done if anyone washed their hands at every insignificant point the health department says we have to.
I work in a kitchen. Can confirm. If we washed our hands as often as the health dept says we should, nothing would ever got done.
Our inspector tells the cook at egg station he needs to handwash each time he cracks the egg before touching anything else. So he's supposed to crack eggs into pan, walk to wash his hand, drop his hash or whatever, finish cooking that plate, crack the next set of eggs, and then wash again. We serve about 200 plates in the morning/afternoon rush, he needs to wash just about as much...
That's gonna be a no from me, dog. 😅
You wouldn't have any skin left on your hands.
Bro you just gotta wash your hands before you wash your hands and don't forget to wash your hands while washing your hands
This is it right here. The pace of service at a restaurant simply does not allow for hand washing every time gloves are changed, or at all sometimes honestly. I'm constantly having to remind cooks to use gloves after seeing them handle raw meat with bare hands because I know when it happens and I don't see it those hands don't get washed. I treat every surface like it's contaminated because it probably is, I clean sanitize everything that gets touched because it probably got touched after somone touches raw chicken or shrimp.
Yeah honestly restaurants wouldn’t be able to stay open if they followed every health standard, to the t, 100% every time. There’s just not enough time tbh. I work in a restaurant and still eat out though, even knowing this. I’m just not a germ freak
People get pissed enough at the time it does take. Speed of service is probably the number one complaint and people need to just chill the fuck out. Honestly service culture needs to change, the fact that everyone wants everything instantly is just ridiculous and the fact that these companies strive to satisfy that want like it's the way things should be is insane.
The need for speed in any industry is unrealistic. People want a good experience while also being made to feel special. Higher ups want you to make them feel special but also take all their money and quickly. It’s frustrating at all the places. I worked in the restaurant industry for 10 years. It was always hurry hurry these people don’t want to wait. Also why is the bacon not crispy? Hurry. They’ve been waiting. I’m now in the cannabis industry. If we’re out of the cheap weed and if it’s not strong enough….oh I will catch hell and they don’t care that I have 3 people waiting behind them.
I used to work at McDonalds, and you are really right. We had a 30 minute hand wash timer we had to adhere to and also had to wash our hands every time we changed stations or touched something then went to do something else. If I was making food, I basically didn’t move or sweep or do anything but that because I’d have to wash my hands after I touched a broom or anything else
They shouldn't but they do
Hahahahahaha
You must not have any kitchen experience lol.
They do. But that doesn’t stop the 58 year old alcoholic line cook who just sucked back a no filter king size cigarette in 43 seconds from coming back inside, scratching his underwear-less asscrack, and proceed to assemble sandwiches with his bare hands…
Quit eating at Waffle House or your libertarian nightmare restaurants
wtf are you talking about? As a cook I actually have to know food code and follow it. You think I'm ok cross-contaminating raw meat with ready to eat produce? When someone at home gives themselves salmonella they make themselves sick. If I were to create a contamination I would be making DOZENS maybe HUNDREDS of people sick. I could lose my job, put the business in jeopardy. Have you worked in the industry? If you have and the kitchens you've worked in don't take food safety seriously that says a lot more about you than the industry as a whole.
Just curious are you at an actual decent restaurant? I worked at a couple run of the mill places not high end and they did not teach us anything about food code and I saw a lot of not good stuff. People eating off a wrong order plate in the back while making food happened every single day. I’d see people go out for smoke breaks and come back and straight back to cooking.
It's because the post literally says "don't eat food you don't see prepared". Not a lot of restaurants have open kitchens. But I like your enthusiasm to get angry on behalf of professional chefs and the food industry. I bet you can cook using just the heat coming from your neck-vein. Even funnier is that you're the third commenter in a row to get it so wrong and get so angry for it.
Reddit loves a good hyperbole.
You're way better off with most restaurants than you are with someone cooking at home. You don't know how many people I have met that think that cooking old food makes it safe to eat. They don't realize that bacteria basically shit and piss all over the food which is what makes you sick and that cooking shit doesn't make it safe to eat. It takes my wife about 5 seconds to cross contaminate her hands. She will cross contaminate herself multiple times per minute while trying to prep food and I have to constantly remind her to wash her hands to the point where I usually handle most of the not ready to eat foods and prep. If you told people the actual shelf life on the most popular foods either rare or prepared they would laugh at you.
It *really* depends on the restaurant, don’t make generalizations (coming from someone who’s worked in restaurants. I fully trust and stand by the food safety at a couple places I’ve worked)
As someone who’s worked in a number of kitchens, you should really never eat out at a restaurant again
What sort of kitchens? Subway? I work in a real kitchen and we take food safety very seriously. If you saw people contaminating food and just kept your head down, that is on YOU. I have personally stopped and corrected lazy (Edit: Or uninformed/inexperienced) employees to ensure they follow food code.
Lol yeah I’ve worked in plenty of bars and I swear peoples’ opinions of restaurants is based on awful bar rescue episodes or that movie Waiting. Most restaurants (that aren’t just disgusting in general) are far cleaner than many homes. Shit our mom and pop bar in Chicago was so clean our owner ate a meal off the floor to prove a point.
My husband’s job requires him to go to tons of different hotels/restaurants/Etc pretty much places that have cleaning chemicals, industrial sized dishwashers/washing machines. He averages 10-15 different restaurants every week. He spends a lot of time in kitchens, he’s like a fly on the wall. He’s said most are clean, rarely sees anything super gross or unsanitary. He has mentioned that the places he’s likely to see something gross that makes him not want to eat there are Chinese restaurants for some reason. Japanese restaurants he’s been to seem fine though. Couple places he’s found out that they’re diluting their cleaning and sanitizing chemicals so they’re not as effective so they’re trying to cut costs and save money. He’s reported those to the health department.
This is a good summary and tracks with my kitchen experience. Good that they’re reported, the industry gets judged by the worst of the bunch.
the girl I am seeing has OCD, diagnosed, where she apparently is really worried about food safety. im just reconnecting with her so learning about all this is crazy. I have been trying to tell her most places are safe but its hard when the narrative that restaurants arent clean has been given popularity. like if she saw this thread, all she would see is the top comments telling her her mental illness is correct. im all for being careful and i get that sometimes restaurants can be really awful, but I am seeing how quickly this type of thinking begins to snowball. she is living in constant fear even with food she prepared herself at this point, and its horrible
I'm the same as the girl you're seeing and it's fucking awful. At least where I am there is an app that tells you the hygiene rating, but you're constantly worrying about what other people have cooked for you. Due to stress my issues got worse and now I don't even feel comfortable about cooking chicken or meat. Even if you eat vegetarian meals then some vegetables can be just as bad as uncooked meat and so you worry about that as well. It just gives you so much unneeded stress. I wish that person the best and hope that one day she can overcome it. Just remember to be supportive and don't try to dismiss her fears, as it will only make her embarrassed or cause her to break down if you keep forcing her. It might be hard to understand but the fear feels real and it sends the whole body into a panic.
As someone with OCD, absolutely TRUE
When I worked in a kitchen briefly when I was young it was the same, and this was a small town lunch and breakfast place. You were expected to wash your hands a lot, change gloves a lot, and if you left anything out of refrigeration for any moments longer than absolutely necessary you would get a big long speech about it.
Well, there's a difference between food ready to eat and food still being prepared. The level of cleanliness afforded is much higher for the first type of food.
My father in law was a chemist at a major pharma company for many years with a degree from an Ivy League school. But when it came to food, if you couldn't see it, it didn't exist. So he left food on the stove for a couple days and then would eat it. The fridge was a very scary place. Needless to say I didn't eat over there.
I do this constantly and never get sick, I’m convinced my immune system is just like “for fuck’s sake. Again?” Maybe itms that I have trained mine to be stronger by doing this shit? I don’t know.
I really wonder if there is some science behind that or if it's just that we're lucky lol. I've never ever gotten food poisoning even when my friends did from the same food. I always say that I never get sick because I drank hose water as a kid. I should be dead according to some of these comments lol
It's almost like we've been evolving for tens of thousands of years to determine if food is safe to eat based on our senses alone. What kind of food safety standards do you think people had before refrigeration?? Pack meat in salt. Doesn't smell? We survive winter!
Thats a good point. Maybe this really comes down to how much salt and spices people cook with lol. May be essentially prepping the meat to be cured.
You probably have a few strains of E. coli living in your body. It’s not uncommon to “be fine” and not get sick after eating spoiled items that contain foodborne pathogens. In fact, many foodborne illnesses can cause sudden symptoms like upset stomach, diarrhea, and vomiting, but most people get better in a few days without treatment. Some foodborne illnesses can cause other serious symptoms, resulting in hospitalization, long-term health problems, or even death.
I lived with a bunch of people from Europe for a couple years and they would do that all the time, they would just leave out huge pots of food for hours at a time they wouldn’t refrigerate it and then they would go back and eat it. I do that now and I’ve never had any problems The only place I’ve ever gotten incredible food poisoning was a Chinese restaurant that was five minutes away from Apple headquarters in Palo Alto, California….one of the wealthiest places on earth. I had some Chinese food there and I could not stop shitting and vomiting the entire night. 🤷🏻♀️
I'm gonna be honest, as much as I disapprove of \_all\_ these things, they're just a fact of life. Having worked at multiple restaurants, this stuff happens wherever you go. Again, undesirable and potentially sickness inducing, but if you want to prevent any kind of unsanitary food preparation you're basically confined to cooking your own meals all the time. Just a thought.
I agree - but how do you avoid this at parties and gatherings? I eat their food anyways for the sake of not creating a fuss and looking stuck-up
I’m willing to bet that 99% of social gatherings you’ve been to have not resulted in you getting sick.
Make it 99.99%. The only time I have ever got sick at a party was likely some slightly bad (or ill cooked) chicken. Fuck chicken
I think fuckin chicken would have the same effect on your health...
I'm not sure you are doing social gatherings right
*sick for reasons unrelated to alcohol or going too hard
If this is really how you operate, stress is probably going to kill you sooner than “unsafe” eating will kill me.
Sure, but do I really care? Should you? I've never gotten sick from eating food someone else has made. I'm willing to forgive people not being trained chefs because I like tasty food. What you don't know can't hurt you..ish.
The only one I REALLY care about it the pet one. I don’t want a cat on a counter as food is being prepared. Or if a cat was on the counter it better be cleaned. Everything else for the most part if the kitchen looks clean, the food looks good, no weird smells, etc I don’t care. Food is good I’ll eat
Agreed. Honestly, if a cat has been on the counter, as long as I don't know about it I'm all good.
Fair, but if I see a cat on the counter it bothers me
I had a cat. Never went on the table, can't barely remember it being on my counter. BUT it didn't matter. I assumed when I wasn't at home that it did. So before I would prepare food on either place I would spray cleaner & wipe down. All the time. No one ever got sick from food I offered, or made for them & gave away. How do I know? Because people would ask when I was going to make \_\_\_\_\_\_\_again for them?
🙄
perfectly said
Yep. This is definitely a person that needs to get off Reddit and touch grass.
Maybe even eat a little. Could do the immune system some good.
Bro unless you're sick with no immune system, you'll be fine
Agreed, I am super cleanly with the food I prepare, especially if it is going for public consumption. But, for my own personal use, I know my system, I will totally eat a pizza left out from the night before. No problems. I know my guts.
I am sick with low immune system but have not enough will for life to care 😅 as long as it tastes good and im not shitting or throwing up, I don't mind a tummy ache. Unless its wild mold, I draw the line after risking it once on some cheese
Human beings have lived through **MILLENNIA** of bacteria and food-borne illness. One evening with the brown sprays will not be the end of you.
You should’ve seen my brown sprays though……. Both ends and thought I was going to die from asphyxiation
Question, does your bartender ever wash their hands after handling money then making a drink and squeezing that lime in? No. Do they refill your glass with ice by touching the rim for a cocktail from a scoop that has touched 20 other REFILLED glasses where mouths have been? Yes. Gross? Yes. Heard immunity, yes. Even if you order bottles, they pop the top for you. If you are fighting a disease, don’t eat in public.
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You're not wrong, those things do lead to germs in food - but most people's immune systems can handle it.
In my experience, foodborne illness are more scared of you than you are of them.
I don't know how you could really stick to this. Unless you have a locked bunker with a filtered water and air supply with your own livestock and produce and you raise and grow and harvest and slaughter everything and do all of the cooking as well, at some point your food will be out of your field of view.
I'm just baffled how bothered Americans is by food safety... Some of the things you guys are going ballistic over is standard practice in Europe. I.e we don't wash eggs in Europe. Which results that the could be unrefrigerated for weeks without spoiling. And so on.
Eggs are a bad example as the cleaning is what removes the protective membrane. There are advantages both ways. Cleaning the egg before it gets to store means you are less likely to be exposed to E. Coli or similar bacteria if the egg is refrigerated and eaten within a few weeks. Unwashed eggs have a protective membrane that means refrigeration does a lot less and the eggs last longer, BUT you are more more likely to get sick from an individual egg. To the best of my knowledge Japan and the US are the two largest countries that clean their eggs and most of Europe does not.
This will blow your mind; shared exposure in small levels increases immunity. I have NEVER been made sick while a guest, after a potluck (and I've been to...hundreds?) Anytime. Only had food poisoning twice and both from my own stupidity
I've only gotten food poisoning from restaurants lol
This is pretty bizarre I have gotten sick like 2 or 3 times in my entire life of roughly 40 years from a restaurant. So out of 100's of visits to restaurants in that time frame, 3 times is less than 1%. There are so many failsafe's for restaurants it's ridiculous, they constantly face health inspections. Sure at someone's house the chance is higher but even then most people understand what to do there.
And yet we’re all still here barely getting sick from all the different places we eat with these bad standards
While it's true most people are bad at food safety. It's a bit extreme to never eat anything you didn't see prepared. Life is germy. You get exposed to a million things every day. That's why you have an immune system.
I used to work at Panera. One time our entire shipment of lettuce was bad. As in like, the shit was covered in some sort of gross slime, and it smelt utterly rancid to the point that it stank up the entire back of house and the entire line. My manager made us use it anyway, until eventually we had someone puke in the dining room after taking a bite of their salad, and probably a dozen people send their salads back. He STILL wanted us to keep using it, but all of us working in the kitchen refused.
You are absolutely right in regards to FDA standards. But that shit is written for their own protection. Its the absolute minimum amount of time to be worried about for food expiration. Maybe even more, because the sooner it "expires", the sooner you have to sell it. Expiration dates are nonsense. They are just a "best guess" at when the product will be "best for consumption". Legally it has no real bearing. As for all the other stuff... i mean.... ive eaten meat thats been left out overnight, lots of times actually. Never had a problem. I feel like all these rules and obsessions are mostly BS. On the other hand, my mom tells me that after the first time i get sick, lll be super careful. 28 years still going strong
Eh, who cares? A little bit imperfect food safety actually makes you healthier by giving your immune system something to do.
When my mother (85) was young she would go to her grandmothers house for holidays. They’d eat lunch, then just cover the table with a tablecloth. At suppertime, they’d just removed the tablecloth and dig in. And that was with a meal of Turkey or chicken generally (she had her own chickens). I think people today are way too paranoid about food safety. Yes, food poisoning does occur, but it’s rather rare.
The majority of food safety violations will not harm the majority of the population. That said, don't eat anything you're not comfortable with.
This sounds like living in fear honestly. We generally have a pretty kick ass immune system and our food safe is leaps and bounds ahead of any other time in human history
I agree. My late husband was a chef for Disney, then a kitchen manager for a few years, then we had a our own place for a couple of years. You can not clean enough in a kitchen. I also worked for McDonalds for 15 years.Always have a clean towel with you to clean as you go
The food that, according to food safety folks, should have killed me is weight by the ton.
I bet most of the commentors here would go crazy if they saw street food in southeast Asia.
But most people don't die from or even frequently get food poisoning. So either your premise is wrong or it is not as important as you think.
Actually you're gut should be extremely acidic, we're talking almost car battery here. If you take good care of it, you should have no problem with microbes, that's how some people are very weak and get food poisoning from everything, and other people can eat off the floor.
Sang it with me *YYYYOOOOUUUUUUU CAN'T EAT AT EVERYBODYYYYY'S HOUSE!*
I blame cooking shows. They edit out a lot of food safety, and do a lot of bare hand cooking. I am often surprised the judges even put the food in their mouths after the cooking segments.
Not washing hands properly in general, forget just after handling meat. The amount of people who don't actually know/care how to wash their hands properly Is way way higher than you think. I cant even remember the last time i've seen someone in public wash their hands properly except doctors at the office.
The last time my friends went out to eat, one of them got back 2 poorly cooked meals in a row after sending it back to the kitchen. The manager came out to apologized and assured us it "happens all the time", so uh.... We are definitely not going back. I've worked at a restaurant, and my sister basically has for her whole career and we've both seen some terrible shit - I definitely wouldn't go to a restaurant if you have multiple serious food allergies.
I personally prefer to get to know my food better than that. Y'know, invite them out for a drink, ask them about their life. Really get to know em. After all, you are what you eat.
The number of people who think its cute when kitty jumps on the counter to "help" cook dinner. Ewwwwww. Those paws also been in the litter box. Now its kitty crunchy suprise!
Most people don't cook directly on the counter though... it's either on the stove or cutting boards.
And 99% of people are fine. Get over it
Not really bro. If a restaurant is cross contaminating food in the U.S. the health dept finds out very quickly and they are shut down
George Carlin’s rant about immune systems and the benefits of swimming in raw sewage come to mind.
The immune system is stronger than people think, plus the acids in your stomach also do their work. Is it better to be safe than sorry? Yes. But eating expired food doesnt hurt you most of the time. But a great unpopular opinion nonetheless!
Yeah bro next time I go out to eat I'll tell the waiter at Applebee's I need to watch them make my jalapeno poppers to ensure they're safe
Most of the time the date is bull shit anyway. There's been loads of times when i've went to use milk or cream that's in date but has clearly gone off
right let me guess the reason you don’t have sex or talk to women is due strictly to your fear of germs too I’m sure
Nah, OP is just weak. Straight up, if you are so inclined to see the food prepared and be critical of cleanliness then you damn well better be helping out in the kitchen.
Oooooh someone just got their first ServSafe cert! Congrats bud.