[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.