Yeah. The thing is, I do believe that a lot of the regulations that have to be enforced are more about avoiding lawsuits than about actual safety and health. (And don't get me started on frivolous lawsuits ... that's another good hot button for me! ).
I've never heard anyone say you could give your poultry salmonella. That is just silly. Now, I'm very paranoid about meats. I am super careful, I don't touch anything, I never taste anything with raw egg, I wash the area immediately, etc. But the idea you give it the bacteria, where would anyone even come up with that? Goofy.
Growing up overseas, I can see the difference in how paranoid and germ-phobic Americans are.
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I remember seeing a notice in a Swiss hotel room once, saying something to the effect that "this room is cleaned so painstakingly and is so germ-free you can sleep on the floor!"
And what do I wanna bet that in Switzerland people take their dogs into restaurants practically at will and nobody objects?
I never heard anyone say you could give poultry salmonella either, thats just strange. Same with beef, you can't give it e. coli, it either has it or it doesn't.
I used to be pretty careful in regards to meat prep when I used to eat meat. It took me a few weeks to realize that yes I could taste my soup as soon as I put all the ingredients in and yes I could use my cutting board for chopping everything without having to clean in between items. I didn't realize how paranoid I was about meat and meat borne bacteria until I gave up meat and was pretty happy not to think about it anymore.
Holy cow....I really should just print this out and mail it to my mother in law...she's an effin' pain in the arse when it comes to things like this.
Some examples:
If the food is left out just while we are eating, she'll throw it away "because it has gone bad".
She dates everything...and I mean everything in the fridge and cupboards and will only keep those things for two weeks past the opening date - including condiments like ketchup and mustard. Apparently the lady *LOVES* to waste food. Tabasco sauce does not "go bad" in two weeks....
She double bags everything in the freezer - even if it is already in a bag.
She refuses to eat any meat that is not well-done because of salmonella and "coli-e (seriously, people)"
She threw an absolute hissy fit this Thanksgiving when I wouldn't let her throw out about 8 lbs. of turkey meat that had been out on the counter for an hour. The woman still won't talk to me and told me not to be surprised when my son got salmonella and had to go to the hospital.
Oy. Would hiring a hit be out of the question here? I think it is totally justified.
She dates everything...and I mean everything in the fridge and cupboards and will only keep those things for two weeks past the opening date - including condiments like ketchup and mustard. Apparently the lady *LOVES* to waste food. Tabasco sauce does not "go bad" in two weeks....
Oh my god. My head would explode. Seriously. I cannot stand to see food wasted for no valid reason like that.
I lived with my BIL and his wife for a while and she had this routine of cleaning out the fridge every Saturday morning. One Friday night I made a huge pot of sausage and shrimp gumbo (and spend quite a bit of $$ on it, too) thinking I'd have it for lunch for the rest of the next week. I came home from shooting a wedding that Saturday - dreaming of a big bowl of gumbo before I went to bed - and she'd THROWN IT OUT. Because anything "left" in the fridge on Saturday was obviously "bad".
It was one of the large string of things that meant DH and I moved out ASAP and didn't talk to them for several months afterwards.
Oh, and your MIL would die in our house: Friday afternoon, we set out plates of sliced turkey, cheese, bread, dressing, etc., AND LEFT THEM OUT ALL AFTERNOON to snack on. The only thing that got put back in the fridge was the mayo.
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Last edited by PhotoChick; 11-29-2008 at 07:44 PM.
We also had turkey and other leftovers out all afternoon yesterday.
my son has yet to die.
Score one for me.
She's coming over for a "linner (lunch + dinner)" this afternoon - hopefully she doesn't ask where the turkey in the dish came from. She'll just die if she realizes it is the stuff that had been left out all day.
I'm all for food safety, but there are way too many neurotic people that take it to extremes.
washing your hands & keeping the areas you are working in cleaned up as you go are two simple things...
In a place I worked several years ago they made wearing gloves mandatory--people did things that grossed me out while wearing the gloves that they would never do when they didn't. All I am going say is there's a lot more hand washing going on when gloves aren't used..
My sister (a registered dietitian) was a health inspector (now she's a WIC nutritionist), and she knows that most of the rules are overly strict, but had to enforce them. It was really hard with foreign-born restaurant owners who would say "I've owned a restaurant in (country of origin) and have done this for 30 years and no one ever got sick."
She said that while the foreign-owned restaurants sometimes had more violations, especially minor ones, than restaurants owned by native born americans, whenever there was a case of people actually getting ill it was rarely the foreign-owned restaurants.
One of the local news programs around here used to have a report every week on restaurant inspections: one week they'd have it on Minneapolis, next week on St. Paul, week after that in Bloomington, then back to Minneapolis, etc etc. There were always a lot of violations reported for Chinese mom-&-pop restaurants (including one just a block from my office) and I wondered why they eventually discontinued it: was it complaints of bias against Chinese restaurant owners, or was there just no interest in the report?
ANOther, it even could have been changes to the reporting laws, and the legal level of confidentiality of the reports. I know that my sister was not allowed to share details about the specific violations for specific restaurants.
Although restaurants scores were still reported on the health department website, they no longer listed the details as to which specific violations occurred, just the total score. I know the changes were in response to a new law, but I don't know if was a federal law or state law.
Obviously if the score is very high there are few violations of any kind, but for restaurants receiving passing, but lower scores, I think the specific violations are as important as the score itself.
I think health violations should be required to be available to the public by law. We're the ones eating there, and we have a right to an informed choice. I think certain "privacy" laws go too far. If you don't want people to know that you have a dirty kitchen, then clean your kitchen!
In a place I worked several years ago they made wearing gloves mandatory--people did things that grossed me out while wearing the gloves that they would never do when they didn't. All I am going say is there's a lot more hand washing going on when gloves aren't used..
I agree with this. I've watched people crack eggs with gloves on and then touch things that aren't going to be further cooked such as buttering toast. There's no way they can feel whether or not there are raw eggs on their hands.
I grew up with the saying "You eat a peck of dirt before you die." I have a healthy immune system and rarely get sick, even a cold. I follow basic food safety guidelines, but I don't believe in anti-bacterial soaps and wipes etc. Acquaintances at work who are nuts about cleanliness are frequently sick. I think they're so rarely exposed to germs, they have no immunities built up.
I do have to add that I use paper towels to touch things like door handles in public bathrooms when I'm on my way out. Some things are just too icky to risk.
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