[hughesjj]

So far, to my knowledge, I've gotten food poisoning from something I cooked for myself exactly once, and that's because my 12 year old dumbass brain thought microwaving a steak for a few minutes was a valid was a valid way to cook it

Almost every time I've actually gotten sick from food has been eating out. I've also seen some close calls like when my fiancee was served 'rare' pork... Which isn't a culinary thing.

[clan]

Rare pork is most certainly a thing! You are missing out.

The scare of pork is the risk of trichinella. To such such a degree that some speculate that is why Muslims have codified it as haram.

Trichinella is practically non-existant in domestic pigs in EU due to regulation/industry.

In the US you should take more care. You should however remember that cooking food safely is not a magic temperature but a function of temperature and time. The threshold for pork is then 63C because mostly everything unwanted is dead at that temperature.

But if you keep it at a lower temperature but for a longer time you will have the same effect. An easy way to do this is using "sous vide". Simply put a water bath at a constant temperature. This has the advantage that if you vacuum your meat it can go into the water straight from the freezer without defrosting first. I usually add one hour to the sous vide time to allow for defrosting time.

So I usually sous vide pork chops (from the neck) at 54C for some hours and then pan sear to finish the crust. With quality pork I honestly find this superior to a regular bovine steak!

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinella https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety

[steveBK123]

Exactly. It is surprisingly hard to give yourself food poisoning if you cook for yourself.

On the other hand, like you, essentially every food poisoning I've had was dining out. Suburbs with lax food safety enforcement, city with some of the most rigorous inspection regimes in the country, wherever.

Once my wife & I both got food poisoning ordering completely different food, as though the entire food station was contaminated.

[crazygringo]

> It is surprisingly hard to give yourself food poisoning if you cook for yourself.

It's not hard at all if you're cooking chicken. All it can take is reusing the cutting board without washing.

If you're careful about it, it's hard. But plenty of people aren't careful. They think the risk is "overblown", they assume salmonella in chicken is as rare as salmonella in eggs.

This makes it pretty easy. And then they think they caught a stomach flu or something.

[steveBK123]

At that point why not just lick raw chicken? I mean if you stick your finger in an electric socket you'll get hurt too.

Just suggesting a basic level of hygiene.

[aequitas]

Because there is a chance you don’t get sick because the particular chicken was not carrying the disease and even then, the cause and effect are split by some time. Whereas getting shocked by sticking something metal in a socket is almost a given and has a very short feedback loop.

[crazygringo]

I mean, I'm not disagreeing.

Just saying that it's not hard to do. That's all.

[DerekL]

It actually is “stomach flu”, because that's the common name for gastroenteritis, even though it's not related to influenza.

[potatopatch]

It's extremely common to get food poisoning at home, and for many people/cases it is indistinguishable from the flu.

Who separates meats in their fridge and on their cutting boards, dates the opening times of items, etc? Similarly, a home dishwasher doesn't actually sterilize anything, which is why its safer AFA chemicals. It's just providing the hope that small doses of something you've already interacted with won't cause sickness.

But once you've been sick from some contamination you won't really notice it, but guests might. Some restaurants run the same way as typical homes, and will be universally contaminated and someone who eats out regularly with variety is going to have similar consequences to being a guest in houses all over town..

[XorNot]

Everyone I've ever known? Who doesn't separate meat in their fridge, and who's keeping so much in there at one time that this is a problem?

Dating opening times is going too far IMO: if it's open, and longer then 7 days in the fridge you toss it. Which is to say, if you can't remember when you opened it, that's also a good sign not to eat it.

It's not like any of this is hard to do.

Although this:

> a home dishwasher doesn't actually sterilize anything,

is not really a statement on anything. "Sterilize" is a very specific term which means you did a process which is guaranteed to kill extant micro-organisms and viruses. But the reason hand-washing is so effective at preventing disease is that it doesn't necessarily kill them, but soap will wash them off surfaces very effectively. They're still alive, but they're in the sewer. Commercial dish washers aren't designed to sterilize either - they're designed to get things clean as fast as conceivably possible (i.e. single digit minutes, not hours).

The converse of this is the problem with old rice: reheating rice is periless, because while it will kill the bacterial contamination, the toxins remain and that's what will make you feel sick if you eat it.

[steveBK123]

Also restaurant vs home cooking is like a classic principal agent problem.

If I don't want to get sick, I store stuff reasonably, sniff before cooking, and don't hold things past date/days open.

A restaurant wanting to make money is incentivized against being "better safe than sorry" on throwing away stuff rather than serving it. They care more about complying with the letter of the law with respect to passing health inspections well enough. If they occasionally get someone sick, its not always probable that the customer attributes it back to them, and still.. may return anyway.

For the "you get food poisoning at home all the time and don't know it / its just like flu" crowd.. I'd argue you maybe have not had the most severe, rapid onset forms that you can get from a restaurant.

[potatopatch]

> For the "you get food poisoning at home all the time and don't know it / its just like flu" crowd.. I'd argue you maybe have not had the most severe, rapid onset forms that you can get from a restaurant.

People who have had botulism know that isn't real food poisoning..

[morsch]

> if it's open, and longer then 7 days in the fridge you toss it

I hope you don't strictly follow that rule or you'll throw away loads of absolutely edible stuff. Pickles, ketchup, mustard, jams, ... Yoghurt is often still fine after a week. My thing of miso has been open for months.

[XorNot]

I mean yeah, you adjust for perishiability. The stuff you list is already preserved though is the thing ('cept mustard, though I did eventually discover that Hot English Mustard loses it's kick after 1.5 years after the jar is open).

Anything you'd normally consider to need to be refrigerated though starts from the "when did you open it" sort of consideration though - meat and vegetables both have about a 1 week timer on them in my experience (though you'll usually know by smell in advance). But "smells okay" isn't a chance I'm going to take unless I'm in a survival situation - and you need to buy groceries weekly anyway.

What helps a ton is having a cheap chest freezer though - they're much more efficient on power, and you can store a ton of stuff in there for ages and just defrost as you go.

[willcipriano]

I throw out food when it is bad, not based on some arbitrary timer.

[potatopatch]

I do too and I have an upset stomach sometimes.. I note and try to adjust, since I'm not going to throw out virtually everything I buy to be 100% safe at the cost of absurd food waste. The point of health inspectors, etc, is that we can't take all the same kind of risks in a high volume kitchen.

I don't understand why the idea that an average person gives themselves food poisoning often is rocket science here.

[tzs]

> Similarly, a home dishwasher doesn't actually sterilize anything

What do you consider to be sterilization? Even my old dishwasher, which was made in 2002, has a sani-rinse option that adds a 10 minute rinse with 160℉ (71℃) water which the manual says satisfies the NSF Protocol P153 for sanitizing in household spray-type dishwashers. Unfortunately I can't find a free copy of NSF Protocol P153 to see what that actually accomplishes.

Looking at a few dishwashers that I'd consider to replace mine when it eventually breaks--and I'm a cheapskate so that basically means what I can find at Home Depot or Lowes or Best Buy in the $500-800 range rather--it looks like sanitizing or high temperature cycles are still common, although nowadays what they are saying they meet is "NSF/ANSI 184: Residential Dishwashers" [1].

That requires a minimum 5-log (99.999%) reduction of bacteria and a final rinse temperature of at least 150℉. The 5-log bacteria reduction is only required if you run the sanitizing cycle.

For commercial dishwashers the required reduction in bacteria is the same, although they are required to reach at least 165℉ rinse if they are stationary rack single-temp dishwashers or 180℉ otherwise. For commercial dishwashers the 5-log reduction is required on the regular cycles.

[1] https://www.nsf.org/consumer-resources/articles/dishwasher-c...

[ephbit]

Many posts here about sterilization seem to focus on the temperature.

Yes, having a dishwasher program that thoroughly rinses at 90 °C for 10 minutes will kill most germs in there.

I think this leaves out a very important aspect: how you use your dishwasher has a big impact.

I claim that programs at significantly lower maximum temperatures (say 50 °C) can be safely used as long as people are careful about (a) the state of the items they put in their dishwasher and (b) how they position the items.

If you put in items with lots of and/or big food scraps on them you increase the risk of some of the material being left in some sieve or getting caught in the tray. All material that's left for the final rinse will populate the water with some particles which then cover all items.

Same with dried crusts that only get soaked but not removed by the program.

And also the same with items that are inapropriately positioned, so that food residues aren't reached by the water jets, or so they topple over and fill with water which then also spoils the final rinse.

I'd bet if you reliably prevent the above mentioned things from happening by being careful about which items you put in and how you position them, you can use a low temperature program without any risk at all.

[potatopatch]

> has a sani-rinse option that adds a 10 minute rinse with 160℉ (71℃) water

And everyone who owns that model uses that option every time? For the industry washers there's probably less options to bypass sanitation.

It's merely statistical matters that make it less relevant how often people insufficiently sanitize at home. If some are actually immuno compromised and kill themselves that's still nothing like single Burger joint to a public health policy.

(I seem to have triggered the HN "everyone has my current OCDs and doesn't behave like my college roommates" on this thread.)

[lnsru]

We separate meats and cutting boards. The ones who were used for meat are being washed very carefully with lots of chemicals and hot water. Dishwasher runs at 65 degree Celsius. That’s enough for disinfection in my books. Plus cleaning with chlorine every 3 months. We have only couple things open in the fridge and don’t keep them for long. That means if pesto is open we eat noodles more often. There is no rocket science in keeping home kitchen in good shape.

Don’t let me start with a stories from a friend who worked as an interim manager at Burger King. It’s scary! But even worse are smaller industrial kitchens without strong control from state and franchise representatives.

[steveBK123]

Exactly, its not hard to control this at home.

Not to mention that the rate of failure of restaurants implies the probability that any given restaurant is in some amount of financial strain and maybe pushing the limits on ingredient freshness & cleaning standards...

[tzs]

> Plus cleaning with chlorine every 3 months

Isn't bacteria growth exponential (up until you reach the maximum number that your environment can support)? And don't they often have insane doubling times (something like 20 minutes for salmonella and e. coli)?

Given that I'd wonder if cleaning every 3 months actually makes much difference, except for maybe a couple days right after you clean. Past that any that were missed in the cleaning will have repopulated back to whatever levels they were before the cleaning.

[ephbit]

> And don't they often have insane doubling times (something like 20 minutes for salmonella and e. coli)?

Such values are AFAIK under ideal conditions, usually meaning on a wet surface or submerged in a watery/damp environment at a mild temperature, with sufficient nutrients .. not really how most people store things like chopping boards or other kitchen equipment.

[lnsru]

I guess, you might be right on this. But we also check the smell. Normally there is nothing special with dishwasher we got new and are taking care of. Used washing machine on other hand has ugly smell again days after chlorine cleaning.

[s1artibartfast]

>It's extremely common to get food poisoning at home.

What does that mean to you? That it will happen to an individual multiple times a year? That it will occur in a large city a few times a year?

The risk is hugely overblown in my opinion.

Home dishes don't need to be sterile, they just need food and grease removed.

[potatopatch]

> What does that mean to you?

There are 48 million cases for 350 million Americans a year. Experts say most involve factors at home, I.e. improperly stored leftovers involve both systems, but are attributable to the at home fault..

> The risk is hugely overblown in my opinion

Sure, only about 3000 Americans die a year of food poisoning and most of them will have had other contributing health factors..

I simply reject this idea that a person who thinks food safety is easy is doing food safety really well.

Restaurants have additional complications and risks of not knowing the health of their guests, etc, and having a high volume of food and therefore bacteria passing through. The average home cook scaling up their behaviors would be much more dangerous and doesn't recognize the indicators of mistakes that would kill one of those unlucky 3000 as a house guest.

[s1artibartfast]

Thanks for setting a number. I think we primarily have different definitions of 'extremely common' and how concerned one should be.

I think that is a high estimate of incidence and mortality, but even taken at face value, I still wouldnt call that common. we are talking about a once every 5 year event, or if we apply a pareto (20%/80%) assumption, once every 25 years for a normal healthy person.

For a normal healthy person, I think getting some diarrhea once every 25 (or 5) years isn't a big deal. This tracks with my anecdotal evidence, where most adults can recall having food poisoning one or two times. This, based on my risk tolerance, doesnt even rank on my list of concerns.

[bilekas]

On that note I'm reminded hearing from a chef actually that if you've ever had diarrhea, its most likely you had a mild form of food poisoning.

[Avalaxy]

> I've also seen some close calls like when my fiancee was served 'rare' pork... Which isn't a culinary thing.

Don't let the Germans know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett

[Xylakant]

Some teams I worked with would ritually celebrate Mettwoch every Wednesday (Mittwoch).

[ceejayoz]

Rare pork is absolutely a thing.

https://www.seriouseats.com/case-for-raw-rare-pink-pork-food...

Food safety is a matter of both temperature and time (https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-s...), and we’ve all but eradicated trichinosis in commercially available pork.

[fedeb95]

exactly, you can have problems also with rare beef

[MichaelRo]

I'm self-administering (unwittingly) mild food poisoning pretty regularly because I can't throw away food, particularly food that I spent precious time on cooking it myself.

Like a big pot of soup, some fried meat and whatever side dish like cooked cabbage. The idea is to spend the unpleasant cooking time once, put it all in the fridge then for a few days at least the whole effort is just to retrieve servings and heat them before eating.

Most of the times I finish what I cooked before starting to spoil but even spoiling isn't very sudden. Like I ate 5 days old soup yesterday and tasted a little funny but it was all good, no side effects. There's still a bowl left at the bottom of the pot today and by the time I'm hungry it's too late to start thinking and waiting for alternatives so what the heck. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger I guess. Therefore it happens sometimes that I wakeup at 2 AM with an acute feeling that a bowel evacuation is imminent if you know what I mean :)

[NumberWangMan]

The trick is to once every couple of days when it's starting to get to that point where it'll go bad soon, take it out, and re-cook it somehow to kill any bacteria. This could be tossing soup back on the stove, or microwaving veggies steaming hot.

Also, it helps a lot to have strict sanitary standards for yourself, like always using a clean, fresh utensil to scoop out your servings. Or if you use the same one, start from the most-recently cooked food and end at the oldest, so you're not potentially introducing bacteria or mold from older stuff into newer stuff.

I eat leftovers sometimes up to maybe 10 days at max, but I am pretty good at avoiding any issues from it.

[saltcured]

For soups and stews, a useful approach is transfer into smaller single-serving containers to freeze. Then you can take out one serving at a time to thaw and reheat while the rest can stay frozen for many weeks.

You just have to cool it first so you don't overload the freezer with too much energy at once. We cool the pot, then divide and refrigerate the smaller containers overnight before transferring to the freezer the next morning.

We put our whole soup pot into a cold water bath to rapidly cool it. When the water warms appreciably, drain and replace with cold water again. Sometimes we put ice or those sealed gel ice packs into the bath to really accelerate the process.

[glitchc]

That's called the sous la vie style of cooking, gaining popularity in busy North American households every decade.

[saiya-jin]

I presume you meant 'sous vide', aka stewing stuff in plastic bags. When talking about various chemical crap in food and around it, I find it hilarious that folks consider baking food they eat in plastic bag as something to not even pause and think about healthwise

[civilitty]

If you’re concerned about the plastic you can use reusable silicone bags.

[tremon]

Are you referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide or am I missing the joke here?

[drcongo]

I have a shellfish allergy, every meal out is like a game of Russian Roulette

[Two4]

you microwaved a steak?!!

[adrian_b]

Roasting meat in a microwave oven (without water in a covered glass vessel) is a valid cooking method, which provides tasty meat in a perfectly reproducible way and in a shorter time than traditional cooking.

Nevertheless, for good results it must be done at a low power (I use 440 W in a 1000 W oven) and a long time, e.g. 20 to 25 minutes for chicken, about 30 minutes for turkey and more for pork/beef. For organs, e.g. livers, hearts, gizzards, a somewhat shorter time is enough.

When done for the first time, experiments are needed to determine the optimal power and time, which depend on the type of oven and on the amount and kind of meat. Once determined, the results will always be the same and the meat is very tasty, because it loses nothing, except a part of the water content (roasted meat has typically 2/3 of the weight of raw meat, due to water loss).

The meat should be microwave-roasted after removing the bones, and preferably after being cut in bite-sized pieces, which will avoid too violent steam expulsions if the power level is set too high.

[bilekas]

This is an uncomfortable amount of information around microwave cooking meat for me..

[sigilis]

It’s a reasonable thing to try for someone who doesn’t know how to cook a steak and may have been expressly forbidden from using the stove.

Plus he was twelve, definitely in the age range where such errors are the expected product of experimentation in an unfamiliar world.

[carlob]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4tIPFD7W3Q

Somebody microwaved a whole brisket, and it was surprisingly good.

[Two4]

I'm shocked, I would never expect a microwave to make anything other than grey, chewy meat

[lupusreal]

People get unreasonably squeemish about microwaves. There's nothing wrong with them. Frozen TV dinners suck but that's something different.

[dghughes]

You sound like you have the traditional Hughes sensitive gut. Welcome to the family.