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]
(Photo: Getty)
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@hi: it’s not “poison” when you get food poisoning. it’s not like there’s cyanide or mercury in your food. food poisoning is a result of bacteria.. which could arguably be good to have exposure to, i guess.
sort of like how kids who play in the dirt a lot don’t get sick as often when they’re older.
then again, the only times you’ll be exposed to food poisoning bacteria again (which is when the immunity would help you) is when you get food poisoning. it’s not something that really floats around in the air and you’re exposed to all the time i don’t think. so the benefit is questionable..
I have nothing against cold pizza, in fact I think Pizza Hut pan pizza is better cold than hot, but I had a room mate in college who absolutely refused to refrigerate his leftover pizza. The local Papa John’s had a campus special, $10 for a large pie and two 20 oz sodas. My room mate would get this and instead of using my refrigerator that I offered for community use, he would just put the leftover pizza in the box in his closet or under his bed and eat it over the next day or two. This wasn’t an occasional occurrence, this was two or three times a week. How he didn’t fall over dead I will never know.
About the 5 second rule… if you drop some food on the floor (let’s say in your home) and reach to pick it up, pause for a second (ha! only 4 left now), and ask yourself:
“Did I wash my hands before eating?”
If the answer is “No,” that food is probably not going to be much competition for whatever is on your hands. Unless you dropped the food near the toilet.
I hardly ever wash my hands before eating, and that’s only if there is visible dirt or if I just handled something that I really don’t want to ingest (ie: heavy duty degreasing agent). Everything else, I figure I can handle.
I went swimming 20 minutes after eating a couple weeks ago and immediately felt nauseated. I couldn’t stay in the pool more than 15 minutes. So I’m not sure it’s only about muscle cramps.
Here are two more not one the list, one confirmed true and one just my opinion.
1) Ice in fast food restaurants can be dirtier than toilet water.
[abcnews.go.com]
My guess is it’s because the containers with ice are usually near the floor and airborne bacteria will fall into it.
2) Straws at fast food restaurants can be dirty.
I never use straws from dispensers at fast food joints. Be honest: have you ever seen anyone wash their hands before buying at fast food restaurants? Few do. Worse still, I would bet many who do use the toilets in restaurants don’t wash their hands afterward. With countless people pawing boxes of straws for who knows how many days without the boxes being washed, there’s no way I’m going to use a straw out of one.
People think I’m a skinflint because I order drinks without ice and want more. That may be part of it, but with no dirty ice and no dirty straw in the cup, it has got to be cleaner than it might be otherwise.
In college my roommate’s mom used to bring her a huge pan of home made lasagna (w/meat) when she came to visit. We only had a small dorm sized fridge so she stored the leftovers on her desk just covered with a piece of foil. It took her most of a week for her and her boyfriend to polish the pan off. I’d love to know how they didn’t get sick off it.
Don’t worry about any of this.
Just remember to drink EIGHT glasses of water a day.
Oh no … wait … that turned out to be a myth, too.
Funny thing about that one is that ‘they’ can’t seem to find out where that recommendation came from in the first place! No problem. It is just all part of the conspiracy to make us paranoid so we can get hooked on unaffordable prescription drugs and make the Pharma companies happy, happy, happy.
I love being old enough to be a cranky curmudgeon!
“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.”
In the UK, Marks & Spencer foods carry a sell by date AND a use by date.
@fonzette: I used to work at a grocery store when I was in high school. One thing I clearly remember was managment telling us that eggs were still good up to one month after the sell-by date. In fact, if any stocked product hit the sell-by date, it wasn’t discarded, it was discounted.
“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.”
Wrong! Many bacteria in food produce chemical endotoxins that make you feel sick even if you cook the food.
@P_Smith: The whole “ice is dirtier than toilet water” thing is an entirely moot point. If you were to use public toilet water, filled as it is with all sorts of toxic chemicals to eliminate bacteria, to make ice, you’d probably drop dead before you could finish your soda.
@Eyebrows McGee: I have never understood that “wash chicken before cooking” idea. I’m still going to have to cook it to an internal temp that will kill the bacteria, so why bother?
And I’m going to go with “campylobacter” on the spelling, rather than “cylampobacter.”
@azzy: I think all cheese molds are safe to eat. On hard cheeses I usually scrape off the moldy part but I don’t worry about cutting an inch beyond. On soft cheeses I usually throw them out because they’re usually starting to go ‘off’ by that point anyway.
@Gann: Microwaves by themselves don’t kill bacteria. It’s the heat that does it. If you microwave the food long enough to reach a safe internal temperature, it will kill bacteria just like any other form of cooking…but hardly anyone cooks leftovers long enough for that, because they’d be overcooked.
“Debunking” implies they explained why these things are not true, and cited references to support those claims. Instead they mostly just asserted they were myths, without much evidence. Without evidence, this is just a competing set of myths, and much of it does not pass the sniff-test. If this stuff were all true, humans would not have survived before refrigeration and modern sanitization. For example, I know for a fact (as do most people here) that 2 hour old pizza is not a health hazard. The “bacteria = bad” paradigm is well past its use-by date.
@ringo00: I think I’m like your roomate then! I love hot pizza, can eat cold pizza, but to me refrigerating it just ruins it. The crust just gets terrible. I’d rather the pie sit out overnight than end up in the fridge. I won’t eat it after noon or so the next day though, doing stale ruins the crust too.
@Eyebrows McGee: Quote the full wikipedia sentence McGee. Foodborne illness is commonly called food poisoning, [b]even though most cases[/b] are caused by a variety of pathogenic bacteria, viruses, prions or parasites that contaminate food, [1] rather than chemical or natural toxins.
@nedzeppelin: “it’s not “poison” when you get food poisoning”
When I got food poisoning I almost died. I’m not glad I got it and I don’t feel like my body gained anything from this. I don’t know where you guys learned it is good for you but I’m telling you it is not. Read the full wiki.
Another quote from wiki: “The term alimentary mycotoxicoses refers to the effect of poisoning by Mycotoxins through food consumption. Mycotoxins have prominently affected on human and animal health such as an outbreak which occurred in the UK in 1960 that caused the death of 100,000 turkeys which had consumed aflatoxin-contaminated peanut meal and the death of 5000 human lives by Alimentary toxic aleukia (ALA) in the USSR in World War II[9].”
Has no one seen the studies done lately about the 5 second rule? It is true, scientifically proven.
“7. The five-second rule”
I and my friends have a different system that bases the rule on the nastiness of the surface that the food was dropped on. then again, most of us have admitted to having eaten while sitting on the toilet at least once. not entirely sure how that made it into a conversation though…
@Eyebrows McGee: @nedzeppelin:
Food poisoning isn’t just caused by bateria.
[en.wikipedia.org]
ok, I’m done posting now.
It’s not eating out of the trash, but when I was a kid we would order a few extra-large pizzas (donato’s pizza, ohio, best ever) on a friday night for dinner; we’d leave them out overnight on the table, and on saturday morning when it came time for cartoons my brothers and i would have pizza for breakfast (and sometimes lunch, depending on how much pie was left). Never, ever got sick from it, not once. To this day, donato’s pizza left out overnight is one of my favorite foods.
Also once I ate bagels out of a dumpster. They were good.
@magic8ball: I know you’re right about the chicken but I was raised you HAVE to wash it, and I’m having a superstitiously difficult time NOT doing that, lol.
@hi: “Quote the full wikipedia sentence McGee.”
I was reciting from memory what I had to learn for class, not wikipedia, so your bizarre accusation is unfounded. Apparently this is a difficult issue for you, having nearly died of food poisoning, but if you actually read the comments, you’ll see I acknowledge in another post that it’s not “just” pathogens, although it most commonly is, and that that is to what I was referring.
@hi: “Food poisoning isn’t just caused by bateria.” No, it’s not, but that is what you’re in danger of exposing yourself to if you leave your food out unrefrigerated which, based on the content in the article, I believe is what people here are discussing.
Your food isn’t going to reanimate viruses or spontaneously produce flatworms by sitting on your kitchen counter. Any toxins that were present in your food immediately after it was cooked (meaning, those that aren’t broken down by high heat) will be ingested by you wether it’s 10 minutes or 10 hours later.
People who get food poisoning are clearly little dandy girls that should sit and comb their long hair and sing songs for the tough people of the world.
@Bladefist: 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.
What I’d like confirmation on (not meaning by you) is why there are short expiry dates on canned food. When I was growing up, canned foods were known to last on the shelf for up to five years, sometimes longer. Now most cans are given a two year expiry date.
Are companies trying to encourage consumption by scaring people into thinking the cans won’t last? Or has the canning process changed for the worse and long term storage isn’t possible? I could understand foods with pull-tab lids being unsafe because the seal isn’t as thick, but not the traditional style of cans.
I’m not thinking in paranoid survivalist terms, more like an emergency stash in case of an earthquake or something. Who wants to have to constantly monitor what they have stored for emergencies? As well, who doesn’t load up on canned seasonal foods (e.g. christmas pudding) or stuff that is no longer going to be made?
@picardia: It was probably the pizza you ate before swimming; how many nights was it on the floor before you ate it?
@hi:
However, in “The Princess Bride”, Wesley built up an immunity to a poison he used to defeat a bad guy. On a serious note, immunizations work the same way, they put a little bit of the virus in your system so you can fight it off down the road.
@hi: Not all poisions work that way. Some build up in your system and some go away.
@nursetim: Inconceivable
@Lo-Pan: I do not think that word means what you think it means.
5 second rule? At my fraternity this didn’t exist. We had the 12 inch rule. If the food came within 12 inches of the floor it was considered contaminated and unsafe to eat. (Our house was a disaster area, it was demolished 1 year after I graduated)
Man. This list made me laugh. Obviously not written for college kids.
Pizza is dangerous after 2 hours? Seriously? I eat pizza after 3 days regularly. 5 second rule? Only if it doesn’t take me 10 seconds to get the food.
Ridiculous.
Groceries around here put lots of food on clearance when it’s the day of the expiration date, or a day or two after the sell-by date. It’s easy to take it home, eat it that day, or freeze it for later, and you save a bundle on food costs.
On another note, the 5-second rule was indeed disproven on Mythbusters…only two seconds of exposure are required.
I agree with them all except 6. While thawing things on the counter allows bacteria to grow all over them, cooking to the right temperature throughout will kill any bacteria.
Ah man, when I was in high school I worked up in the mountains, living out of a tent. A bunch of us ordered some pizzas and had them delivered from Tupper Lake, even though the drive was 40 minutes each way. Somehow 1/2 a leftover pizza made it under the bunk in my tent. I ate off that thing for at least 5-6 days despite the temp swings from the mid-40s at night to high 80s during the day. Stale as hell but still good!
you are 10 times more likely to get food poisoning from chicken than fish.
Indeed… only if it’s Tyson (or other similar factory raised meat).
I think Americans are so paranoid about stuff like this because for generations we’ve never had real problems to deal with, like wars in our country or huge disasters like tsunamis and giant earthquakes. We have an easy life and we worry about very minor stuff. Try telling some of these worries to people who escaped from the Khmer Rouge and made it to this country–they would roll on the floor laughing.
The woman who got the Ignoble prize for research on the five second rule at the University of Chicago showed that in most dining areas on campus the floors had less bacteria than the tables.