10 Popular Food Myths Debunked
Despite their differences there's one thing people agree on, they love food. What they don't agree on are some of the myths surrounding food. Is seafood actually the most likely food to make you sick? Should you wait to swim after you eat? Is it bad if ground beef looks brown instead of red? To alleviate your confusion, Asylum debunked 10 common food myths. The myths, inside...
The Debunked Myths:
10. It's OK to eat boxed pizza out of the garbage.
Leftover pizza that hasn't been refrigerated within two hours after being served can be dangerous, whether or not it has been in the garbage.
9. Moldy food can be salvaged.
Actually by the time there is visible mold, there are probably other malevolent bacteria already present. Moldy food should be thrown out. The exceptions to this rule are firm fruits and cheeses which can be saved if you cut an inch beyond the moldy area.
8. You should never buy food past its "sell by" date.
"Sell by" dates have a built in grace period, therefore if you buy some food a few days after the "sell by" you should be safe as long as you eat the food within about 24 hours.
7. The five-second rule
Some people consider this more of a joke than an actual myth but don't be confused since it only takes a split second for bacteria to attach itself to some dropped food.
6. Frozen turkey can be thawed on the counter.
A defrosting a turkey on the counter is the perfect storm for salmonella and other baddies which can easily cross contaminate your food if turkey juice is flowing freely on your counter top. You should thaw the turkey in water below 40F or let it thaw in the refrigerator in a container or dish where the juices can't escape.
5. Don't swim for at least a half-hour after eating.
Your mother probably tried to lay this one on you since digestion diverts oxygen away from the extremities, a common cause of cramps. Nowadays experts agree that there is ample oxygen in the body for digestion and skeletal muscles. Sorry, Mom.
4. Hamburger meat shouldn't be brown on the inside.
The reddish color in meat, also called bloom, is actually the result of a reaction between the meat and oxygen. If the inside of the patty is brown it indicates a lack of oxygen exposure and poses no health risk.
3. Meat soaked in alcohol can be left marinating outside of the fridge.
Unless your meat is submerged in grain alcohol, the normal alcohol in meat marinades which is further diluted with the meat's juices will have very little effect against killing bacteria.
2. Gum remains in the stomach for 7 years.
It is true that gum cannot be completely digested by the body but it will pass through the digestive system and not be lodged in you for an inordinate amount of time.
1. Seafood is more likely than other meats to cause sickness.
According to the FDA you are 10 times more likely to get food poisoning from chicken than fish. However, fish still needs to be properly inspected and stored to be safe.
Asylum Debunks 10 Gross Food Myths [Asylum]
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Comments:
Ah pop culture, how you reinforce these stupid myths.
10. It's OK to eat boxed pizza out of the garbage.
Who ever thought that this one was OK?
@kylenalepa: Although I never ate pizza out of the garbage, during my college years I will admit to waking up after a heavy night of drinking and eating the pizza that was sitting in the box on the counter overnight.
Hubby is paranoid about the sell-by. One day past - trash. Me? If it hasn't tried to walk away on its own, it's probably still good. Or at least won't kill me.
10) I eat pizza that's been sitting out for awhile. A little nuke in the microwave and I'm good.
9) But doesn't the mold kill the bacteria? Hello ... penicillin?
Yes, the last one was a joke.
@kylenalepa: In college, half a Dominos pizza was left in the box and shoved under the couch. I found it two weeks later and I opened it expecting a disgusting sight. Instead, it looked like ca piece of pizza that had just gone cold. A roomate dared me to take a bite, so, being a guy, I ate two pieces and it tasted about the same as a piece of cold pizza.
I think it has more to do with the amount of preservatives that Domino's uses, I don't think it would have survived if it was a local, private, pizza place.
@CBragg: still do this all the time. thought since it had the 4 food groups it was a sound, nutrional breakfast.
5. Don't swim for at least a half-hour after eating.
I hate this "Myth" because it actually has some truth to it. Yes, you can get in the water after you've had lunch... but if you plan on doing heavy activity in the water, like a lot of moving around, or laps, then it could cause cramps. Same thing if you exercise after eating.
7. The five-second rule
10. It's OK to eat boxed pizza out of the garbage.
That's why we have immune systems.
@kylenalepa: I don't eat it out of the trash but I like room temperature pizza. Not overnight roomtemp, but when the pizza gets delivered I like jsut leaving it on the counter and munching on it all day.
@stacye:
Yes, it's a matter of stomach cramps brought on by movement, not oxygen leaving the extremities (what is the logic here? you won't be able to move your arms to swim to shore??).
One is not supposed to eat for two hours prior to yoga practice for this and other reasons, most notably that a big wad of food sitting in your stomach blocks the flow of energy throughout the body.
And although yes, that's why we have immune systems, once it's in the garbage, I don't eat it. However, I routinely purchase a pizza, eat 2/3 of it, leave the remainder on the countertop in the box, and then three hours later come across it. "Hooray, more pizza." I say, and reheat it.
The suggestions here are extremely-safe. It's as if you go to a lawyer and ask for advice on whether to eat that pizza from two hours ago. "Well, it's possibly contaminated. I would advise not to". Like stacye said, we have immune systems for a reason.
Same with the Sell By dates. Sure, some things spoil easily. But throwing out some boxed crackers because they're past the date is crazy. Cutting away an inch of mold on cheese? I generally hate mold, but there are tons of cheeses that are SUPPOSED to have mold.
Why am I trusting this website to debunk myths when it doesn't cite sources or experts? Isn't this how food myths start?
those who don't realize the 5 second rule is nothing more than a joke really need to analyze how they live their lives...seriously
Wow. Today's Straight Dope [www.straightdope.com] touches upon the seating/swimming topic.
Whole muscle meat is generally safe to leave out for an hour or two, by the way (not poultry, and maybe not game).
4. Hamburger meat shouldn't be brown on the inside.
Hamburger & steaks are treated with carbon moxoxide to give it a reddish color and to keep it looking fresh on the outside so stores can sell more by the sell date.
Story here: [www.washingtonpost.com]
"The meat industry knows the answer, which is why it has quietly begun to spike meat packages with carbon monoxide."
Actually, I remember seeing a study on the "5 second rule" that found that, in fact, food had few bacteria after a few seconds, but a ton after 20 or 30 seconds. So I think the myth is that its a myth. Here's an article on it, actually:
Although i see it was conducted by a couple random students, so, you know. The NYT is somewhat more ambivalent, but notes that "Quick retrieval does mean fewer bacteria"
on the five second rule. this was tested and is not considered myth although they upped the time to 30 seconds.
The Connecticut team wanted to test the rule in a non-lab environment (how many people smear their floors with E. coli?) and took their samples of apple slices and Skittles, chosen because they wanted a "wet" food and a "dry" food, to the college's highly trafficked main cafeteria. The items were dropped in intervals of 5 seconds to 5 minutes before being tested. It took about 1 minute for the apple slices to develop bacteria and 5 minutes for the Skittles, so the researchers concluded that the standard should be 30 seconds, with a notation that dry and/or porous foods may last for up to 1 minute and still be safe to eat.
All of this is good to know when you drop a couple pieces of popcorn at home and scoop them up again, but negative test results aren't enough to make me want to eat a piece of food dropped on the floor of a public cafeteria no matter how long it is considered to be "safe to eat."
@jedipunk: There's also the Clemson study and the Illinois study that basically indicate that food can be on the floor for as little as a second before being infected.
You know what's right above your mouth? Your nose. And you know what your nose is for? To tell you if what you're about to eat is stinky and therefore rotten.
I realize this doesn't apply to everything, but it certainly applies to milk, etc - things with "sell by" dates that have nothing to do with when the food actually goes bad.
I've used eggs with a "sell by" date almost a month past.
"10. It's OK to eat boxed pizza out of the garbage.
Leftover pizza that hasn't been refrigerated within two hours after being served can be dangerous, whether or not it has been in the garbage."
Then why hasn't half the college population dropped dead from some sort of bacterial infection? Personally, I have difficulties eating pizza hot let alone as a hunk of congealed mold. But eating for breakfast leftover pizza that had been sitting out overnight is so common in college that it should be a menu item in the dining halls.
Eating pizza out of the trash is probably OK, since you have to be either drunk or insane to do something like that, and if you're drunk, there's probably enough alcohol in your body to kill any germs. If you're insane, then we all know that God looks after the insane, so they're good.
if you eat more fresh food you don't need too many sell by dates. fruits and vegetables it's pretty easy to see and feel when it goes bad. and meat's pretty easy to see and smell when that's gone too.
Yeah, I think 2 hours is like the official standard that the government and everybody concerned with nutrition has decided on for ALL foods to be left sitting out without danger. Like even potato salad with mayo. That's the home food safety guideline for ALL edibles. But obviously there are things you can leave sitting out for just ages without much ill effect, and if potato salad with mayo can survive 2 hours, I'm guessing cold pizza can survive way longer.
(One they have just changed their recommendation on is that they no longer recommend you wash poultry before cooking, because far more people poison themselves by NOT CLEANING THE SINK after washing the poultry than by not cooking the poultry enough to kill some bacteria that didn't get washed off. I just can't make myself NOT wash poultry but now I"m all hypervigilant about cleaning the sink after.)
@stinerman: I would like to see a study on how effective the microwave is at sterilizing our food. I know I feel better about eating questionable leftovers after a good nuking.
I always thought the sell by date was like the word of G-d but the other day i had a huge thing of butter milk still around 4 days after the sell by date. So i searched google to see how long it keeps past that date and heard on the cooks illustrated boards that it can keep up to two months past that date according to the people posting.
I have a dream of creating software that will track my food with either barcodes (possible via cuecat) or RFID and have a computer tell me what is going bad when and possibly suggest dishes for me that will use the food i have before it expires. I am such a geek i've even thought about using scales built into the base of the cabinets so i can monitor how much i have of each good. You wouldn't need individuals ones just make sure the program tracks the weight it after every food is put in and removed.
@Eyebrows McGee: i actually wonder about mayo heavy things. one of the prime ingredients in mayo is vinegar and that's a natural disinfectant. so i wonder if maybe it has a slightly longer no fridge life than other things.
ketchup too now.
i must go experiment.
Like Wormfather, I'm also 27, and have been eating pizza that's up to 3 days old off the counter since I was at least 10, probably earlier. Granted, my family has iron stomachs from doing things like this our entire lives - but I'm going to have to call bull on the answer to #10 (no, I have never eaten it out of the trash - who the heck throws out perfectly good pizza?!). Of course, I'm not a scientist, just one person with life experience, ymmv.
@Hanke: Me, not because it's potentially dangerous, but because it's gross. If the pizza isn't hot enough to burn the top of your mouth, it's not hot enough.
uhoh im in trouble, 10 times more likely to get sick from chicken instead of fish.... i eat chicken every day, im a ticking time bomb
@Weirdsmobile: I am never drunk or insane, but I am a dumpster diver (and a trash can "diver") I've eaten many a half pizza from the box that somebody (financially rich?) threw away. I've always believed that the more bacteria etc one eats the better one's immune system. I've never gotten sick from food, and rarely even get an upset stomach, and I've been eating like this for years.
is the food poisoning thing taking into account the fact that chicken is eaten much more than fish? is this in terms of rate or absolute numbers?
also, i ordered pizza last night and left it on the counter all night... then put it in the fridge this morning.
it still tastes delicious and nondeadly.
@freepistol: Another thing I learned when I took a college nutrition course is that the average adult American gets mild food poisoning 3 times a year, usually cylampobacter jejuni (I hope I spelled that right). They basically said "if you throw up for 24 hours or less, it's food poisoning; there's no such thing as a 24-hour stomach virus."
But the other thing they said is that this is GOOD for you, to get mildly food poisoned fairly routinely. Because then when some e. coli or botulism comes along, your immune system is in good practice from kicking the crap out of all that weak-ass cylampobacter (which you only need to worry about if you're an infant, quite elderly, dehydrated, or immuno-compromised). Whereas if you NEVER get food poisoning, you get much, much sicker from smaller quantities of the more serious pathogens.
I can verify that the leftout pizza has caused illness at least once - the Sleepover Incident of 1998. But I would agree it's not something that happens frequently. I've eaten leftout pizza on a few occasions in the past 10 years and been just fine. It's the same with all of these - it COULD happen.
Still, I plan to print these out and give them to my grandpa. In March, he left his corned beef sitting in his turned off oven for two days b/c he didn't have room in the fridge. He assumed it would be fine because he salted it so I have to imagine that he believes a lot of these other things too.
My roommate's mom keeps sending her home with cheese she bought 6 months ago that she's kept frozen in the freezer. Is this stuff safe?
When she'd moved in she'd brought shortening that was 18 months old. When shortening that is NOT butter flavored turns yellow, it's time to throw it out!
@Lambasted: Because they have other bacterial infections to worry about. Multiple infections cancel out, didn't you know?
We used to store pizza in the box inside the oven (turned off)
Never got sick from it, that I know of.
I would say though that for #10, if you're in Japan you can sift through the garbage at your convenience store with not much problem. They constantly churn their merchandise daily so they are forced to throw out perfectly good food at the end of each day. I used to just go to 7-11 at like 11pm and buy up whatever they were going to throw away for dirt cheap. Unlike 7-11 in America, in Japan they have pretty good food. Heck the Denny's in Japan is awesome!
@Eyebrows McGee: You really beleive that? Eating poison in small quantities over time can kill you. Haven't you seen the movie "The Sixth Sense"? The little girl gets sick and eventually dies.. well that part of the movie is real(as in it could happen in real life).
Holy mackerel ... where are these 'myths' coming from??? Pakistan? El Salvador? Space Aliens? Sweet Babbling Buddha ....
@hi: It's not "poison" (despite being called "food poisoning," a term which does encompass toxins and contaminants as well as bacteria, fungus, and other pathogens) it's pathogens. You're not, like, accumulating arsenic in your body! You're getting a bacterial infection and purging it.
I hate sell-by dates. Cant we just simplify it for everyone and have food expiration dates? Then stores can determine how close they want to get to that date, before pulling it. I can see at the store if there is enough time before buying it. And I know exactly when to throw it away at home.
Stupid sell by.