#Food safety

[arctic-hands]

Christ I've never been so happy to be forced into a gluten free diet

CAN WE STOP HAVING LISTERIA OUTBREAKS MY IMMUNOCOMPROMISED CONSTITUTION IS NOW TOO TERRIFIED TO EAT FOOD

The recalled products were sold in the U.S. and Canada at the following grocery chains, TreeHouse said Friday: Aldi's (Breakfast Best brand) Dollar General (Clover Valley brand) Food Lion Giant Eagle Hannaford Harris Teeter H-E-B PriceChopper (PICS brand) Publix Schnucks Southeastern Grocers Target (Good & Gather brand) Tops Walmart (Great Value brand) Additionally, the recalled waffles were sold under some of the following brand names: Foodhold Kodiak Cakes Simple Truth

[fuckingrecipes]

seeing the poison foods ask (well written by the way) reminded me of a conversation I had with a coworker a long time ago and that might help others to know:

the danger of food that has spoiled isn't necessarily that the microbes are going to infect you and make you sick that way. food poisoning is straight up poisoning, the microbes produced toxins as by products when they were munching on the food

in other words, cooking fresh meat to kill the germs naturally present works. cooking spoiled food does NOT because you're not just at risk from the actual living germ but from the chemicals they left behind in the food and which don't go away when you cook it

(coworker thought you just had to cook off meat longer)

You are correct! This is a good reminder.

Heat will kill bacteria.

Heat will NOT destroy the poisons that the bacteria have already created. (not the important ones, anyway)

[reasonsforhope]

"A 9th grader from Snellville, Georgia, has won the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, after inventing a handheld device designed to detect pesticide residues on produce.

Sirish Subash set himself apart with his AI-based sensor to win the grand prize of $25,000 cash and the prestigious title of “America’s Top Young Scientist.”

Like most inventors, Sirish was intrigued with curiosity and a simple question. His mother always insisted that he wash the fruit before eating it, and the boy wondered if the preventative action actually did any good.

He learned that 70% of produce items contain pesticide residues that are linked to possible health problems like cancer and Alzheimer’s—and washing only removes part of the contamination.

“If we could detect them, we could avoid consuming them, and reduce the risk of those health issues.”

His device, called PestiSCAND, employs spectrophotometry, which involves measuring the light that is reflected off the surface of fruits and vegetables. In his experiments he tested over 12,000 samples of apples, spinach, strawberries, and tomatoes. Different materials reflect and absorb different wavelengths of light, and PestiSCAND can look for the specific wavelengths related to the pesticide residues.

After scanning the food, PestiSCAND uses an AI machine learning model to analyze the lightwaves to determine the presence of pesticides. With its sensor and processor, the prototype achieved a detection accuracy rate of greater than 85%, meeting the project’s objectives for effectiveness and speed.

Sirish plans to continue working on the prototype with a price-point goal of just $20 per device, and hopes to get it to market by the time he starts college." [Note: That's in 4 years.]

-via Good News Network, October 27, 2024

[incognitopolls]

You just made pasta. You want parmesan cheese on it. You find one container left in the cabinet. It's still sealed, but the expiration date was 4 months ago. You unseal and smell it, and it smells like normal parmesan cheese.

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[alwaysbewoke]

hell this is still happening today. how many times have i seen old expired meat being sold at grocery stores in black neighborhoods? whole ass studies have been done on this. smfh the more things change the more they stay the same.

[reality-detective]

Proof Was Just Published We Are Eating Fake Fruit In America

“We knew it, and now there's proof. Of course, it wasn't our FDA or our CDC that published this. No. It had to be clear across the world.”

American watermelons in the study have been proven to be adulterated. Actually consuming these adulterated watermelons can lead to serious health complications.:

After seen being injected with Erythrocyne B (shown in the video)

- This has been linked to altered childhood behavior.

- Thyroid dysfunction

- Centimeters Carbide, that white dust that you might see on an a watermelon. It’s a cousin to arsenic. It's used for artificial ripening. It's literally a poison

- It causes kidney problems, lung problems, liver problems

- Centimeters Carbide Poison can put you into a coma and potentially die. 🤔

[shootfighting]

Frozen waffles are being recalled in the USA due to listeria risk. Stay safe American friends.

edit. It's a Canadian problem too.

[feminist-space]

"Lactaid milk is being recalled due to the potential presence of almonds, a common tree nut allergen.

The Food and Drug Administration and HP Hood LLC announced the voluntary recall Sept. 20.

HP Hood said it discovered the potential almond contamination following a "routine maintenance" review but also said they have not received any reports of any illnesses so far.

Five varieties of refrigerated Lactaid milk in 96-ounce containers are included in the recall – whole milk, 2% milk, 1% milk, fat-free milk, and calcium-enriched milk – for potentially having trace amounts of almonds, which are undeclared in the recalled milk products' ingredients list.

The recalled milk products were shipped to retailers and wholesalers in 27 states in September.

A list of Lactaid milk containers affected by the recall and their best by dates, product names and expiration dates can be found on FDA's website.

Customers with the recalled Lactaid milk, which doesn't contain the lactase sugar found in traditional cow's milk, are advised to return the product to the place of purchase for a full refund or exchange. Impacted customers can also reach out to Hood Consumer Affairs at 800-242-2423. The call line is available on weekdays between 9 a.m. ET and 5:00 p.m. ET."

Read the full piece here: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Food/lactaid-milk-recalled-27-states-due-potential-undeclared/story?id=113925025

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I am all for creative sushi, but not when the creator doesn't fully understand the ingredients. A sushi restaurant in Montana served people sushi with raw and very undercooked morel (Morchella spp.) mushrooms on it. Over fifty people ended up sick with gastrointestinal upset, and two people actually died. Other restaurants that served the same batch of morels, fully cooked, had no such issues, and there was no evidence that there was any mishandling of the morels that could have caused a bacterial or other contamination. So it's pretty clear that the raw morels themselves were to blame.

Yes, there are a few wild mushroom species you can eat raw, and only in small amounts). No, Morchella are not among them. Morels have a toxin in them that's neutralized by cooking; Paul Stamets theorized that it's hydrazine, but no one has been able to isolate hydrazine in a morel yet so that's not a done deal. Whatever it is, there's enough of it that it tends to give people nasty gastrointestinal upset when they eat raw morels, even in small quantities. This is the first I've heard of people dying from it.

It's not the only time I've heard of people dying from consuming a commonly-considered-edible mushroom, though. There were two separate incidents--2004 and 2009--in which several people who ate angel wing mushrooms (Pleurocybella porrigens) died of encephalopathy. Now, it did turn out that most of the people sickened had pre-existing liver and/or kidney issues. And a 2011 study identified an unstable amino acid, now named Pleurocybellaziridine, as the possible fatal factor that was found in large quantities in angel wings. It could be that the culprits were flushes of these mushrooms with abnormally high amounts of Pleurocybellaziridine. But you can't tell how much of a given metabolite a given mushroom has just by looking at it, and so that raises enough of an alarm for me personally that as a forager I just put angel wings on the "do not eat" list.

Will I continue to eat morels? Yes. The toxicity associated with raw morels has been known for a long time, and there have been no recorded issues with thoroughly cooked morels (the angel wings were also cooked, meaning the toxin is not thermolabile.) And as mentioned before, almost any edible wild mushroom is going to give you gastrointestinal issues if you eat it raw. The mushrooms you get at the store are a weird outlier that can be safely eaten raw. And by the way, button mushrooms, criminis, and portobellos are all the same species--Agaricus bisporus--at different stages of development.

This is why I emphasize in my foraging classes that you should always cook your wild mushrooms thoroughly, and if you're trying a new species for the first time only eat a small amount and then wait a few days to make sure you don't have any reactions. As the saying goes, there are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.

[aniseandspearmint]

Saw a post talking about avoiding commercial meat the next four years and smh

Its not just the meat, its gonna be EVERYTHING.

All food is going to be less safe. Meat to flour to lettuce.

If you can access alternative sources of meat, good. If you can garden, good.

But if you're like me, and in a city with no ability to keep chickens or rabbits, or garden well (no space or money for meat animals, and my soil isn't safe yet for food growing. I'm working on it but its the work of years) thats going to be impossible.

The best you can do is watch the recall lists religiously, and cook ALL your meats as well as possible.

Mostly the kind of dangers won't be things you can taste or see, but also stay vigilant for crap like glass and plastic in things.

Be vigilant with packaging, make sure nothing is punctured or swollen to avoid botulism. If a foods plastic packaging is loose at all, DO NOT buy it.

Don't immediately throw away packaging/labels after you eat something, or take a picture of the lot numbers and dates, just in case you get sick after eating it.

If you can, stock up on things you can freeze now, in the next few months before orange sauron takes over. He probably won't immediately screw with the safety regs, he'll have bigger things to hit first, so try and stockpile what you can before he does.

And lets all hope that he won't try and stay past his term like he's told everyone and god he intends to.

Stay safe, stay alive.

[fuckingrecipes]

Cooking question I'm too embarrassed to ask someone IRL: how easy or hard is it to accidentally poison yourself?

I know not to eat things that are too old (past the best-by date, changed color etc), I know not to eat things that were burned. I know to be careful about handling raw meat. I know how to store leftovers. I know to pay attention to instructions on the package and to check if the package is damaged etc.

But at the same time... well, a lot of cooking advice I've seen over the years includes some variation of "try things out, see what you like!" and I'd kind of like to do that. But if the results turn out inedible, I'd like them to be "inedible" as in "tastes very bad" and not "inedible" as in "going to upset your stomach" or "send you to the hospital"

If I try to cook/bake/roast/fry/whatever a food that can be eaten raw, like fruit, what are the odds that the result will be safe to eat?

What about lettuce? I'm aware it would probably taste bad, but would it be safe to try?

If I mix random liquid-y things from my pantry to make a sauce for whatever vegetables&meat I'm frying, what are the odds the result would be safe to eat? (Assuming all the components are edible by themself, I'm NOT talking about cleaning solutions or dish soap or whatever)

What might be some questions I don't even know I should check?

If I try to cook/bake/roast/fry/whatever a food that can be eaten raw, like fruit, what are the odds that the result will be safe to eat? If I mix random liquid-y things from my pantry to make a sauce for whatever vegetables&meat I'm frying, what are the odds the result would be safe to eat?

100% safe. There is a ZERO (0%) percent chance of accidentally creating a poison when cooking a safe-to-eat-raw food item.

You're not going to accidentally create a poison when you mix spices, sauces, or various edible ingredients together.

It's just not how chemistry works. With no exception I can think of, you can't take one safe-to-eat plant or animal and cook it or mix it with another in a way that will create a toxic substance.

Cooking lettuce to eat is safe. Cooking whole fruit is safe. Mixing a hundred sauces together is safe. Go for it.

I could take a sample of every single individually edible item in my fridge, pantry, and spice cabinet, blend it all into a big slurry, cook it & eat a portion of that concoction with confidence that I won't die from it. While it may be gross and taste bad, it won't actually harm me. It won't be a poison, no matter how many different types of food ingredients are tossed into the pot.

I cannot guarantee that you will never upset your stomach, because you could be sensitive to or allergic to an ingredient that I don't know about. It's not a poison to all humans, but it'd be uncomfortable to you. You can only learn about that through experience.

What CAN be dangerous:

Improper sterilization and improper technique can accidentally leave poison-producing bacteria or mold to breed when canning or fermenting foods.

Eating large amounts of a couple specific foods can be risky. There's not a lot of these, so here's a list of the big names to keep an eye on:

Cassia (common) cinnamon has a chemical that is toxic in larger quantities, but harmless in small quantities. If you eat 2 teaspoons a day, every day, you'll run into trouble. If you use Ceylon cinnamon instead, you can eat pretty much as much as you want.

Don't eat a whole nutmeg. It's wonderful when used sparingly, but can be poisonous in large amounts. Same rule as Cassia cinnamon: 2 teaspoons a day, every day, will get you into trouble. Eat less or less often.

Eating too much Liver (the organ) can cause copper toxicity and Vitamin A toxicity. It's great for you when added to a meal once a week, or a couple times a month, but shouldn't be eaten daily or in huge amounts.

Don't swallow cherry pits. They're generally harmless when swallowed whole, because they pass through digestion unscathed, but if they're crushed or cracked open first they release a compound that turns into cyanide when digested. Our body handles cyanide pretty well, but 4-5 cracked pits can become harmful. So: Don't chew them, and don't swallow them on purpose.

There are some foods which need special preparation to be made safe. They're safe COOKED, but not RAW.

Cooked beans & legumes are safe to eat. But if you're starting from a totally DRY bean or lentil (canned are pre-cooked) make sure to soak them in water for several hours and boil until they're FULLY COOKED before you eat. (Fully cooked is when you can crush them easily with a fork, with no gritty or hard center) Undercooked or uncooked beans & legumes can fuck up your guts real good. Very painful, horribly unpleasant, but probably won't kill you.

Cassava (the root vegetable that tapioca is made from) MUST be thoroughly cooked before eating. Raw cassava can be toxic. It's another cyanide bro.

Don't eat raw potatoes - always cook them. If your potatoes have sprouted, don't eat the sprouts & peel any green skin off. Tbh tho, an adult would need to eat at least a pound of green potatoes to get sick. Be reasonably cautious about it. Don't feed green potatoes to small children.

--

Note: This advice is intended for someone who shops at a grocery for their food, not someone who is foraging for ingredients or is growing their own. There's a lot more opportunities to poison yourself when working with whole plants in the wild, and not the prepared-for-sale ones at a store.

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[chronicbeans]

But seriously people be careful. It's freaking mozzarella not blue cheese. Moldy cheese doesn't make it blue cheese.

Idk I guess cheese/mold infodump below (trigger warning for pictures of mold):

Blue cheese is made by purposely putting a SPECIFIC type of mold that is known to be safe to eat into it, which is called penicillium roqueforti. For the record, penicillium roqueforti is a different strain of penicillium than us used in making the antibiotic penicillin, which is penicillium chrysogenum. The reason why the mold in blue cheese is safe is because it is purposely put there. We know what type of mold it is.

SPOILED MOLD, on the other hand, can be any type of mold and that makes it extremely dangerous. For one, people can have severe allergies to specific types of mold that are commonly found on spoiled food or in homes. That's why black mold is considered to be so dangerous and a public health risk. Black mold can trigger an allergic reaction from your immune system very suddenly if you breathe it in, especially in immunocompromised people. This CAN BE DEADLY.

The effects don't end there. Even people who don't necessarily have an allergy to mold can be impacted by the molds found on spoiled foods. For example, Cladosporium is a type of mold that can trigger asthma attacks in people with asthma, which CAN BE DEADLY. It's also dangerous for people with allergies or are immunocompromised, like other types of dangerous molds. Even more importantly, it looks like a lot of safe types of mold. The left image is a drawn diagram of Cladosporium and the right is Cladosporium growing inside a home. As you can see, it looks a lot different in real life and is harder to detect, since it looks like a lot of types of mold when you're actually looking at it.

White molds can be dangerous too, for the same reasons. Some can be allergic to it. Some can get infections from it. You don't even have to eat the mold in some cases to get sick of have a reaction, because some people are impacted by breathing in the spores of molds.

Another important fact is that if you can see mold on your food, that means there's a LOT of mold on it. More than you can see. Mold is a fungus, so it must grow out of what it's on in order to be visible. I couldn't find a good quality diagram showing what you see vs what's there, so Tumblr is probably going to tear this diagram's quality apart, but it's the best I can find.

In short, DON'T EAT THE LUNCHLYS and DON'T BUY THEM FOR YOUR KIDS. We KNOW there's mold growing on them already because we can see it. Even if you don't SEE mold on your Lunchly, don't eat it, because it's very likely that it's INSIDE it. You don't have to worry about every food you eat just because there may, theoretically, be mold. Just worry about foods that you get reports of mold being found in new product, like Lunchly.

[unbfacts]

In 2013, the FSAI found horse DNA in over one-third of tested beef burger samples and pig DNA in 85% of them.