Since health officials seem to have very little idea about the source of the recent salmonella outbreak, perhaps it’s wise to educate ourselves a little more on the basics of food safety. Test your knowledge with Forbes’ list of some common food-safety misconceptions. The list, inside…
The misconceptions:
“You can wash it all off”
Sometimes the contamination is within. With veggies like raw bean, alfalfa, clover or radish sprouts, it is possible that the seeds have been contaminated.
“Local means safe”
According to the scientific director of the Food Safety Network at KSU, “It’s more important to ask whether a farm is located near a high concentration of wildlife, what type of fertilizer is used, what water source is used and how often it is tested and what hygiene practices were used during the harvesting, storage and transportation processes.”
“Fruits and vegetables are safer than meat products”
Because fruits and vegetables are often uncooked, anything they into contact with could contaminate them.
“A meat thermometer isn’t necessary”
Instead of guessing, experts recommend a meat thermometer to be sure.
“Cooking kills everything”
You knew that proper cooking protects you against botulism and mad cow disease, right? Wrong, it doesn’t.
“Food left out is harmless”
According to the USDA, foods such as meat, poultry, eggs and casseroles should be discarded if left at room temperature for more than two hours. If it’s 90 degrees or hotter, then one hour.
For more delicious factoids, check out 8 Common Foodborne Illnesses And Their Symptoms.
In Depth: Top Food-Safety Misconceptions [Forbes]
(Photo: Meggito)
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@chrisjames: My Dad used to travel to India about 6 times a year, and at first would get sick if he drank the local water. So he stuck to bottled, but over time that became a pain, so he started to slowly drink local water here and there (for example at a client’s house, not wanting to be rude), and got to the point where he didn’t get sick ever. Fast forward to years later when he would only go every other year, and he said if he had some water then, he got sick again.
So maybe there is some truth to your theory? ie. his body built up resistance to the local pathogens in the water where he was visiting, but when he stopped going for a while, he lost the resistance??
@formergr: That may be the mineral content in the water that does it, but I’m sure it would be the same type of adaptation. I have a cousin who said the same thing, surprisingly, about the water in India.
@vision4bg: Eggs sit in a nest unrefrigerated as well. As long as the shell isn’t cracked they can last for quite a while.
@homerjay: In my school newspaper, they had a question asking students what was the worst thing they’ve ever ate. One student had responded that it was Chinese food that was left out for three days. Worst of all, the student is pre-med. I’d be avoiding his practice if he was practicing near me.
:::sigh:::
As I stated in an earlier post, I work in the food safety field. With that said, I’m always disappointed when I read the comments on a thread like this.
The things that are noted in the article aren’t made up. The food safety rules that are contained in the FDA Food Code aren’t arbitrary.
If you’ve eaten food that has not been subject to proper handling, cooking, storage, or refrigeration and don’t think that you’ve been sick due to it, well, that’s great. Maybe bacteria hadn’t yet had the chance to grow, maybe you have a great immune system, or maybe you were just having a lucky day.
If you’re part of the crowd who speaks out against these kinds of cautions, by all means please continue to take risks like this that will threaten your health if not your life. The rest of us would really appreciate it if by those actions you’re able to remove your DNA from the gene pool. I invite you to eat all the unsafe food that you like – and help natural selection do what it does best.
To “thesabre”: Nice work, you found the flaw in the point that I was making, which was that generally speaking those people who believe they have had the 24 hour flu probably had food poisoning instead. Yes, there are other things that can cause similar symptoms, including rare cases of Norovirus. I’m glad that you were able to completely move away from the idea to prove that you were right. BTW, how often do you suppose Norovirus is to blame for those symptoms?
What always makes me laugh about these articles is the simple fact that outside of winter we’ve only had the ability to convienently refrigerate food for the past 70-80 years. And that was just the rich folks back at the begining. I’ll admit yes being able to refrigerate/freeze food is great and definetly reduces the overall amount of food borne poisoning, but food thats been left out for a little while more than recommended is nothing to bother freaking out about.
All this talk about food being left out reminded me of the part in the “Supersize Me” movie where a McDonald’s hamburger and fries were left in a jar and nothing ever grew on them over ten weeks. Mmmm mmmm mmmm.
@cwlodarczyk:
I don’t think anyone’s “speaking out” against these cautions.
My earlier post, for one, pointed out the fact that this article has a lot of fearmongering, stating that you’re screwed no matter what you do. Wash your produce? Great! You still might get sick! Cook your food properly? Tough luck, my friend, you still got mad cow disease!
Those debating whether food grows bacteria or not when it’s left out…well, that’s another story. Of course it does, and it very well might make a person sick.
But for the other items on the list stating how there’s effectively nothing you can do short of making careful food selection your full-time job – I think that’s irresponsible, pointless, and stress-inducing.
All this talk about raw meat, and not one mention about sushi…
Food Inspector Cat says to tell Tax Cat that this spoiled food should be tax dedcutible!!
*beans
anything they into contact with
*anything they come into contact with
@cwlodarczyk:
True, but that does not mean government regulations may be a bit overzealous for the home kitchen. Heck they might be overzealous for the commercial kitchen, but when the consumer is essentially kept in the dark about what’s going on the kitchen it’s not all that silly to maintain tight standards in the hope that minor slips won’t turn into major outbreaks. Most of us would have to drastically change the way we cook and store food if our home kitchens were subject to the same rules and inspections that restaurants were, yet few of us are dying from foodborne illnesses. On the one hand it’s “It won’t happen to me” syndrome, but at the same time the risk coming from some of these practices is low. I worry a lot more about cross contamination than whether the leftovers that sat on the counter for 3 hours will kill me.
Rare? Norovirus is not rare – it is often described as second only to the cold in frequency of infection. If it comes from contaminated food, it’s food poisoning either way, but it’s so damned infectious that it’s really hard to determine when it came from food and not something else. You tend to blame it on the last thing you ate, but you’ll probably never know.
@Dinion: But they had other means of food preservation, such as drying, smoking, salting, and pickling. And who’s to say that the rate of food poisoning wasn’t higher then, anyway?
I like how we’re supposed to be wary of botulism while we accept Botox as a cosmetic phenomenon.
@kerkira And who do you know that doesn’t keep their pickles in the fridge? hotdogs? And I actually said I am positive that the amount of food poisoning is reduced by refigeration.
All this in the context of an article I read yesterday wherein the Chinese government just ordered Olympic-related restaurants in Beijing to REMOVE “dog” from their menus for the duration. Not just rename it, but remove it. At least temporarily.
Hmmm, I probably ate dog in Vietnam and China; I just didn’t know it. I’m still around.
You’re over-thinking the local line. But the original point misses the big picture.
Local is MUCH safer when it comes to the big picture. The spinach and tomato scares wouldn’t have been huge ordeals if people ate local, only a few communities would be affected. National food supplies put all our eggs in one basket. Local sources keeps transmission lower.
@vision4bg: Same in the UK. Just refrigerate them once you get them home, although I’ve kept mine out then too. Doesn’t really seem to matter although no one could answer why this is common practice there but totally unusual in the states!
I’d love to add one more that I still see, though thankfully not as often. You really don’t need to cook pork to an internal temperature of 180 degrees. 150 – 160 is just fine. Trichinosis dies at 145 degrees and salmonella at 130 degrees. It is okay to see a blush of pink in the center of a pork roast.
That drives me nuts, fighting that battle all the time with my in-laws who want their steaks tough as leather and their pork cooked until they resemble a shriveled chew toy.
Personally, I think a good immune system goes a long way.
I’ll eat lots of things that lots of people would not. The only times (3 in 37 years) I’ve gotten sick from food in my 37 years were from a “reputable” restaurant.
Which is not to say that I think I’m invincible, but I have a healthy constitution and iron stomach. Probably from exposure to lots of bacteria that didn’t kill me. Lots of probiotics, too.
The more beasties you withstand, the more you’ll be able to. Or something like that.
@thesabre: That’s one big reason why fast-food restaurants don’t often fail inspections – there’s standardization in what food goes where. Many, many violations in other restaurants are because people put meat above vegetables, baked goods, or other foods.
I thought it was Punday, not Caturday.
(hey, I’ve been working all day, give me a break)
@Shutaro: but he is so cute!
my question has always been, how long can you refrigerate something (leftovers, mostly) before it goes bad–i.e., when should you fridge vs. freeze? i always put things in the fridge and forget about them and they start to smell funny and i throw them out and say clearly i should have frozen this in the first place BUT then if i freeze things they get all crystally and odd-tasting and i don’t want to eat them anyway. gah. maybe i need one of those vacuum sealers for freezing.
Why can’t you eat food that’s been left out. It’s just a little fuzzy. =)
Sorry I’m at work and at the mercy of….*shudders* MS Paint
@mikel1981:
Uggg! pic didnt show
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Ok, the thing that annoys me is the egg one. Those eggs sat underneath a chicken for at least a day before getting packaged up…so why can’t I leave them on my counter for an hour or so?
The “cleaner” and safer our food is, the more susceptible our immune systems are to common contaminates, and since so much of our food goes through crazy processing, there is always going to be some chance of contamination. It’s like vaccinating for chicken pox, so you can get it when you’re 30 and end up in the hospital.