[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.

[willcipriano]

You may have a illness or disease if you frequently get stomach aches. That isn't typical, talk to your doctor.

[potatopatch]

Thanks, but that isn't really normalized to anything.. The average American should get food poisoning every 7 years (48 million a year) and I have an upset stomach I would associate with at least one food risk in the 12 hours prior more like yearly, but I rarely get flu level sick, even from a flu, certainly not in an average 7 year period.

I think most people simply haven't looked into food safety material enough to integrate a probability that they had a food related factor when they feel sick and therefore conclude that they have no food risks in their daily habits that would equate to a small risk of a major health incident in a centralized kitchen, etc.