#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)

[johnsonrich01]

Join WSQ Food Safety Course Level 1 in Singapore - Adept Academy

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[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

[reality-detective]

Your food is banned in most other countries🤔

[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.

[victusinveritas]

Make Jello proud safely, folks, with some advice from older protest hands on Reddit. Want this kind of info locally? Start working with your local Food Not Bombs or Anarchist Black Cross.

[systlin]

I went to a hippie art school in California. You would lose your mind studying the people there. Vegans? Weak. I knew honest to god freegans. Both kinds.

My Aunt Lynn once gave herself and her family intestinal parasites by dumpster diving for meat a supermarket threw out.

Nothing against freegans actually, I'm all for reducing food waste, but for the love of fuck don't do it with expired beef and pork that've been in a dumpster in 85F heat for hours

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 74

When a new black-haired blue-eyed person appeared in the manor, one could easily be forgiven for thinking that Bruce’s adoption problem had struck again. So color many a batkid surprised that no, this kid isn’t a new sibling, no he didn’t get grabbed from the street, and actually he’s here for Alfred. Apparently Alfred never found it important to mentioned that he has a husband- that the kid kind of implies isn’t human what with the casual way he says he himself is half human- and that this kid is apparently their child. For once it’s Bruce’s turn to come home to a surprise sibling. 

Danny on the other hand just learned that his Clockpa has a semi-mortal partner who has offered to take him in, (in another dimension even! And there’s aliens!!) while the ancient takes care of some stuff at home. And yeah it’s in a rich-manor but Sam has proved that not all rich people are evil, and based off of Mr Pennyworth’s stories the Waynes weren’t bad either. Though based off of the others’ reactions perhaps he should wait to mention that there wasn’t one new family member but three…

[messiahzzz]

it’s been almost a year now… is the bg3 fandom finally ready to talk about how gale’s “hubris” is the sole product of actively feeding his insecurities further and straight up denying him help & guidance when he was at his lowest and needed it most. it’s not one of his core traits and never was. he isn’t some closeted power hungry monster that is just waiting to be enabled. what he wants is admiration, recognition and acceptance. which is also what he sought from mystra before the orb disaster happened. he had no desire whatsoever to become a god himself or challenge her rule, he simply wanted to be seen as sufficient in her eyes (“to serve her better”). to be as equal as he could possibly be in a relationship with a literal deity. he has a deep passion for magic and knowledge that affects almost all areas of his life and enjoys the display thereof. he wants to be the smartest person in the room and enjoys when his work is recognized. he may be perceived as arrogant when it comes to his skill, but he IS NOT hubristic. it truly takes so little for him to be wholly content.

[baldwinheights]

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.

[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.

[hungee-boy]

you literally dont need to know anything about kamen rider to watch kuuga

you dont even need to know anything about tokusatsu to watch kuuga

kuuga is for free on tubi

kuuga is worth every ounce of your time

watch kamen rider kuuga

[reasonsforhope]

"Indonesia’s new government started an ambitious project on Monday [January 6, 2025] to fight malnutrition by feeding nearly 90 million children and pregnant women that is expected to cost $28 billion through 2029, although critics question whether the program is affordable.

The Free Nutritious Meal program delivers on a campaign promise by President Prabowo Subianto, who was elected last year to lead the nation, which has more than 282 million people and Southeast Asia’s largest economy. He said the program aims to fight the stunting of growth that afflicts 21.5% of Indonesian children younger than 5 and would raise the income of farmers.

Subianto has pledged to accelerate GDP growth to 8% from 5% now.

In his inauguration speech in October, Subianto said many children are malnourished. His promise to provide free school lunches and milk to 83 million students at more than 400,000 schools is part of a longer-term strategy to develop the nation’s human resources to achieve a “Golden Indonesia” generation by 2045.

“Too many of our brothers and sisters are below the poverty line, too many of our children go to school without breakfast and do not have clothes for school,” Subianto said.

Subianto’s signature program could cost upward of 450 trillion rupiah ($28 billion) by the end of his term in 2029. He said his team has made the calculations to run such a program, and “We are capable.”

The government’s target is to reach an initial 19.5 million schoolchildren and pregnant women in 2025 with a budget of 71 trillion rupiah ($4.3 billion) so as to keep the annual deficit under a legislated ceiling of 3% of GDP, said Dadan Hindayana, the head of the newly formed National Nutrition Agency...

Nearly 2,000 cooperatives will be involved in the free meals program by providing eggs, vegetables, rice, fish, meat, milk and other food, Cooperative Minister Budi Arie Setiadi said.

On Monday, a truck carrying food arrived at SD Cilangkap 08, a primary school in the Jakarta satellite city of Depok. The 740 students were provided rice, stir-fried vegetables, tempeh, stir-fried chicken and oranges.

“We will send a team to each school to facilitate the meal distribution to students every day,” Hindayana said, adding that the program will provide one meal per day for each student from early childhood education to senior high school, covering a third of the daily caloric needs for children, with the government providing the meals at no cost to recipients...

According to the 2023 Indonesian Health Survey, the national stunting prevalence was 21.5%, down around 0.8% from the previous year. The United Nations Children’s Fund estimated that one in 12 Indonesian children younger than 5 suffers from low weight while one in five is shorter than normal. Both conditions are caused by malnourishment.

“That’s so bad and must be solved,” Suwarso said. “Child malnourishment has severe consequences, threatening the health and long-term development of infants and young children throughout this nation.”"

-via Time, January 6, 2025

[reality-detective]

FACTS: She breaks it down perfectly 🤔

[incognitopolls]

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