Reminds me of an article I came across once about artisanal French cheese. The gist was that the French would much rather risk potential illness from raw-milk cheese than give up the pleasure of eating it.
Growing up in an immigrant family and having lived in Spain a spell, I've come to realize Americans are much too paranoid when it comes to food safety.
> I've come to realize Americans are much too paranoid when it comes to food safety
On the contrary, Americans come from a culture where food purveyors will happily kill you for a quick buck. American food safety is highly regulated because the American business model makes that necessary.
American education is that everything needs to be sterilized, irradiated, and wrapped in plastic. However it does not seem to matter how the food was created with growth hormones, antibiotics, preservatives, and other questionable ingredients.
Some of this might be due to the influence of big ag on our education, media and regulatory systems. These measures definitely benefit the big factories and impose excessive burdens on the small local farms.
People like saying this kind of stuff to imply that, like, steak tartar is safe.
The fact of the matter is that yes, all things being equal, things like actually cooking food or not leaving things out at ambient temperature make it safer to eat.
The problem with food science is that you can have terrible food hygiene and still survive for a long time! This sort of stuff doesn’t instantly kill you
Factbox: Fake olive oil scandal that caused Spain's worst food poisoning epidemic in 1981
> * About 100,000 individuals were exposed and clinical disease occurred in 20,000 people, 10,000 of whom were hospitalized, according to Science Direct website. More than 300 victims died and many more were left with chronic disease, Science Direct said.
> * According to the survivors' organisation Seguimos Viviendo more than 5,000 people have died over the years and there are 20,000 surviving victims with poor quality of life and incurable afflictions.
That's not true. First of all, as cheese ages all the bacteria (and fungi and yeasts) inside it die out because they run out of food to eat. You see, they're trapped in a solid lump of protein so they have nowhere to go. So they die of hunger. That does make the cheese safe to eat so cases of food poisoning from hard cheeses that tend to age for more than three months, are virtually unheard of.
Second, whether good bacteria will outnumber the "bad" depends on how many of each ... goodness value? there were at the start. If your raw milk is contaminated with sufficiently high numbers of coliform bacteria (E coli and friends) there is no amount of bacterial goodness that can make that milk good for cheesemaking. Most likely you're looking at "early blowing" (literally the cheese blowing up like a rugby ball, with a great big fissure in its center, because of gasses released by bacteria early in its maturation).
Third, some "good" and "bad" bacteria can coexist quite happily with each other simply because they do not consume the same resources and so do not compete for them.
Wouldn't that also apply to pasteurized cheese? Cultures are usually introduced which I would expect to outproduce bad bacteria just like with raw-milk cheese.
Americans seem a bit weird about food safety, but also American food seems incredibly unsafe.
I remember an American colleague of mine absolutely freaking out that I was slicing up chicken without wearing gloves, and he was convinced that I'd be dead by morning from some hideous chicken-borne disease because of it. Apparently chicken in the US really is that dangerous, or something, but I guess someone from the US can comment?
I've never seen anyone wear gloves to cut chicken that wasn't working in a commercial kitchen where they required it.
I've been cooking in America for decades and have never once had an issue with cooking chicken and not wearing gloves. My mother, other the other hand, got an eye infection the day after getting a bit of raw liquid in her eye while she was cutting chicken a few months ago. A few antibiotics and eye drops, and it cleared up.
The only absurd precaution I've seen someone take in the US is that my grandmother would overcook pork to the point we would joke that it would shatter if you dropped it- however, she grew up in times when trichinosis was a very valid concern. Nowadays, it is safe to cook less than well done (some prefer medium or mid-well) though I don't know anyone willing to try it.
Industrial-processed chicken really is that dangerous. It's the de-feathering. They place the bird in vat of boiling water. It loosens the stool so the bird isn't really de-feathered in boiling water, it's de-feathered in boiling chicken shit water. Believe it or not this process works so long as you take precautions in how you handle the meat to prevent that bacteria from growing.
Having said that, I don't know of anyone who uses gloves when handling chicken. Just wash your hands and you'll be fine. Then again, this person may have known someone who died from a staph infection. As long as you're not handling raw chicken while having an open cut on your hands or fingers (gross!) then you should be fine. Still, wash up when you're done!
I’m American born & raised, and know of no Americans who are concerned about gloves while cooking (though you do need to wash anything touching raw meat before moving on). On the other hand, Koreans I’ve seen seem to almost fetishize the use of plastics for all manner of cooking which I’ve never understood.
As far as I’ve seen, all the American sterilization obsession is pushed onto the industry, not in the kitchen itself — e.g. you cannot find anything “dangerous” in most grocery stores / restaurants in the first place. The closest is steak and sashimi
> I remember an American colleague of mine absolutely freaking out that I was slicing up chicken without wearing gloves, and he was convinced that I'd be dead by morning from some hideous chicken-borne disease because of it.
Most Americans aren't like that person.
> Apparently chicken in the US really is that dangerous
Not to my knowledge. On the other (ungloved) hand, I don't know of any culinary tradition involving eating raw chicken.
I understand that American chicken is not processed under sanitary conditions which is why it needs to be chlorine dipped to kill the salmonella bacteria.
This was one of the big controversies about Brexit, that they would be receiving chlorinated chicken from America when previously they were able to enjoy non-chlorinated chicken.
That said, even with salmonella bacteria, just wash your hands after preparing it and you'll be fine.
American born and raised here: I always ensure I wash my hands thoroughly after handling raw chicken but I've never worn gloves or ever seen anyone doing it to cut chicken at home.
I have seen it in restaurants but that's more to keep the food from being contaminated by hands, not the other way around.
Wait until the author finds out how prosciutto is made. You take the (raw) hind leg of a pig, cover it in salt, and hang it in a cool dry place for 9 months to two years. Then you take it down, scrape off all the mold, slice it thinly, and enjoy its deliciousness. That's right, prosciutto is raw pork that was left unrefrigerated for months or years until covered in mold.
Right, so: you take the kind of raw meat that is so thick that any contaminants you might get during carving is surface contamination, then cover it in a substance that kills any bacteria or molds that it comes into contact with, making sure to use enough salt to prevent subsequent contamination for as long as it takes for the surface to dry and form an impenetrable layer, and then we let it age for however long we like because it is now physically impossible for surface contaminants to make it into the meat anymore.
Which is completely different from leaving wet meat to just hang out at room temperature for many hours.
Just like good old country ham here in the US. I get one every year, been eating it since I was a kid. Dry, crusty, some mold on the outside. Clean it off an slice it, or soak it for a couple of days then bake it. Either way it's staple here on the farm.
'Peking' is a romanized name for Beijing. So is 'Beijing.' Had the author said "a romanized name for 'Beijing,'" then you would have a had a point. Sure, you could use '北京,' but that is unnecessarily confusing.
the term 'peking duck', much like the more common spelling 'beijing', are based on romanizations of the name of the city of beijing, china, which is a city, and not a romanized name for itself
bringing up the fact that 'beijing' is a different kind of romanization is only useful if the audience needs to be educated on different kinds of romanizations, which is the point of contention between the author of the duck article, Preston Landers, and 'mc32', which is four ascii characters, and not a person
Such terrible misinformation from speculation in the other replies. Peking is not that much closer to the Cantonese pronunciation (see the voice sample in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC). Nor is it Wade–Giles, which would romanize it as Pei-ching. Just look up the word's well-sourced etymology in Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Peking#Etymology): the name comes from Mandarin after Mandarin dropped final -k, -p, -t (which are preserved in Cantonese) but before Mandarin palatalized ki > ji. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_postal_romanization. The initial consonant being p- is also expected, since it is closer to the unaspirated p in most European languages than to b-; the Pinyin p- then corresponds to aspirated p.
FWIW: my understanding is that there's a dialect issue at work too. The folks providing the pronunciation to a transliterator that became "Peking" said the name of the city somewhat differently than the people living in Beijing today do.
First of all, the salt kills all the harmful bacteria. I don't know how true this is, but it's said that mammal meat is denser than poultry meat, bacteria can't grow inside of it (or at least have a lot more difficulty growing inside. Duck prosciutto is a thing too though, so maybe it's just chicken?
The salt inhibits growth. It's no different than curing and salting other meats, it's perfectly safe. See also, dry aging, it doesn't necessarily sit in a fridge yet it's still safe as long as you cut off the pellicles.
The thing that does the damage are the toxins the bacteria produce, not usually the bacteria themselves. If you leave the food in the danger zone, the bacteria colonies multiply wildly, producing whatever metabolic products the entire time. Even if you then cook the food and kill the bacteria colony, it won't necessarily denature or destroy the toxin. The seems like the key part of the recipe to me is actually the antibacterial properties of the marinade!
This is actually backwards for botulinum. Boiling denatures the toxin, but doesn't kill the critter; you need to use a higher temperature, e.g. that produced by pressure cooking / canning. So I'd be curious what bacteria are being referred to.
> Doesn't an internal temperature of 160° F kill everything except some weird toxins?
It's worth noting that food safety is not limited to living micro-organisms but includes everything from physical objects (choking on a chicken bone) to the bi-products of micro-organisms (such as alcohol or the toxin that causes botulism). Although bacteria produces the botulism toxin, the toxin itself can't be rid of afterwards through temperature.
In the case of botulism toxin, it's actually the opposite. The spores are extremely resistant to temperature, but the toxin can be destroyed by boiling at normal temp/pressure until all parts have been fully exposed to those temps. Other toxins are still an issue though, and many are heat resistant, so not a good idea to eat potentially contaminated foods.
Aminita "death cap" mushrooms are one substance that I know of that remains toxic after exposure to high heat over time.
"Amatoxins cannot be destroyed by any conventional cooking method, including boiling or baking. Freezing or drying the mushrooms also fails to remove any amount of amatoxin..."
The science bit says it's safe because the seasoning inhibits microbial growth during the drying period, but the recipe at the top applies the seasoning after the drying period. Something doesn't add up.
No one in this thread (nor in the article) has made the obvious observation that this means there are a massive variety of genuinely safe foods that could be made via currently banned practices. You can only get an exception at great cost for foods with existing cultural practice. Some real innovations, like the initial invention of the Peking duck, are basically prohibited.
PS: it doesn't turn me off in the least and I find many food safety rules to be ludicrous, protectionism, and counter productive.
For example: I find that the requirement to wear gloves while preparing food that I see people touching things they would be less likely to touch with their bare hands, touching, and then continuing to prepare the foods. For me, without gloves I can tell when my hands are dirty and wash them but when gloves I feel nothing and am therefore less likely to wash. Have no proof that this is true for everyone but I'm fairly confident that if I had hidden cameras looking for violations I'd find more for people using gloves than not.
The food safety in general from my Chinese in-laws gives me panic attacks. Mostly related to meat. But they also don't do dumb things like we do such as eating raw cilantro from Mexico.
Readit News
Growing up in an immigrant family and having lived in Spain a spell, I've come to realize Americans are much too paranoid when it comes to food safety.
On the contrary, Americans come from a culture where food purveyors will happily kill you for a quick buck. American food safety is highly regulated because the American business model makes that necessary.
Some of this might be due to the influence of big ag on our education, media and regulatory systems. These measures definitely benefit the big factories and impose excessive burdens on the small local farms.
The fact of the matter is that yes, all things being equal, things like actually cooking food or not leaving things out at ambient temperature make it safer to eat.
The problem with food science is that you can have terrible food hygiene and still survive for a long time! This sort of stuff doesn’t instantly kill you
> * About 100,000 individuals were exposed and clinical disease occurred in 20,000 people, 10,000 of whom were hospitalized, according to Science Direct website. More than 300 victims died and many more were left with chronic disease, Science Direct said.
> * According to the survivors' organisation Seguimos Viviendo more than 5,000 people have died over the years and there are 20,000 surviving victims with poor quality of life and incurable afflictions.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/fake-olive-oil-scandal-...
edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_oil_syndrome
Deleted Comment
"I survived, so it must be safe" is not a good argument.
Second, whether good bacteria will outnumber the "bad" depends on how many of each ... goodness value? there were at the start. If your raw milk is contaminated with sufficiently high numbers of coliform bacteria (E coli and friends) there is no amount of bacterial goodness that can make that milk good for cheesemaking. Most likely you're looking at "early blowing" (literally the cheese blowing up like a rugby ball, with a great big fissure in its center, because of gasses released by bacteria early in its maturation).
Third, some "good" and "bad" bacteria can coexist quite happily with each other simply because they do not consume the same resources and so do not compete for them.
Don't have a fourth one for you.
I remember an American colleague of mine absolutely freaking out that I was slicing up chicken without wearing gloves, and he was convinced that I'd be dead by morning from some hideous chicken-borne disease because of it. Apparently chicken in the US really is that dangerous, or something, but I guess someone from the US can comment?
I've been cooking in America for decades and have never once had an issue with cooking chicken and not wearing gloves. My mother, other the other hand, got an eye infection the day after getting a bit of raw liquid in her eye while she was cutting chicken a few months ago. A few antibiotics and eye drops, and it cleared up.
The only absurd precaution I've seen someone take in the US is that my grandmother would overcook pork to the point we would joke that it would shatter if you dropped it- however, she grew up in times when trichinosis was a very valid concern. Nowadays, it is safe to cook less than well done (some prefer medium or mid-well) though I don't know anyone willing to try it.
Having said that, I don't know of anyone who uses gloves when handling chicken. Just wash your hands and you'll be fine. Then again, this person may have known someone who died from a staph infection. As long as you're not handling raw chicken while having an open cut on your hands or fingers (gross!) then you should be fine. Still, wash up when you're done!
As far as I’ve seen, all the American sterilization obsession is pushed onto the industry, not in the kitchen itself — e.g. you cannot find anything “dangerous” in most grocery stores / restaurants in the first place. The closest is steak and sashimi
Most Americans aren't like that person.
> Apparently chicken in the US really is that dangerous
Not to my knowledge. On the other (ungloved) hand, I don't know of any culinary tradition involving eating raw chicken.
This was one of the big controversies about Brexit, that they would be receiving chlorinated chicken from America when previously they were able to enjoy non-chlorinated chicken.
That said, even with salmonella bacteria, just wash your hands after preparing it and you'll be fine.
Funny thing is that all those signs were next to actually healthy food ! Nothing next to the massively processed food that make up 90% of the shop.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E9%B3%A5%E5%88%BA%E3%81%97&...
it's good.
I have seen it in restaurants but that's more to keep the food from being contaminated by hands, not the other way around.
Deleted Comment
It's analogous to the process of cooking the duck, not the process of hanging it out overnight.
Which is completely different from leaving wet meat to just hang out at room temperature for many hours.
We survived for a few hundred thousand years without an ability to see or quantify microbiology.
Our noses are pretty damn effective.
Also, this is BS: "Peking duck, which also owes its name to a romanized name for Beijing"
No, it is no more Romanized than "Beijing"... One is Wade-Giles, the other Pinyin Romanization.
'Peking' is a romanized name for Beijing. So is 'Beijing.' Had the author said "a romanized name for 'Beijing,'" then you would have a had a point. Sure, you could use '北京,' but that is unnecessarily confusing.
the term 'peking duck', much like the more common spelling 'beijing', are based on romanizations of the name of the city of beijing, china, which is a city, and not a romanized name for itself
bringing up the fact that 'beijing' is a different kind of romanization is only useful if the audience needs to be educated on different kinds of romanizations, which is the point of contention between the author of the duck article, Preston Landers, and 'mc32', which is four ascii characters, and not a person
Doesn't an internal temperature of 160° F kill everything except some weird toxins?
I suspect that most meat left overnight at room temperature and then cooked "well done" would be perfectly fine.
It's worth noting that food safety is not limited to living micro-organisms but includes everything from physical objects (choking on a chicken bone) to the bi-products of micro-organisms (such as alcohol or the toxin that causes botulism). Although bacteria produces the botulism toxin, the toxin itself can't be rid of afterwards through temperature.
"Amatoxins cannot be destroyed by any conventional cooking method, including boiling or baking. Freezing or drying the mushrooms also fails to remove any amount of amatoxin..."
https://slate.com/technology/2014/02/most-dangerous-mushroom...
This is also probably somewhat effective in killing some amount of pathogens at least on the outside. Not sure if same is done for cavity.
> 2. Air is pumped into the crevice between the duck’s skin and meat, allowing the skin to balloon and separate from the meat.
Is to blow the duck up like a balloon with your mouth
https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/687850/Saturday-K...
PS: it doesn't turn me off in the least and I find many food safety rules to be ludicrous, protectionism, and counter productive.
For example: I find that the requirement to wear gloves while preparing food that I see people touching things they would be less likely to touch with their bare hands, touching, and then continuing to prepare the foods. For me, without gloves I can tell when my hands are dirty and wash them but when gloves I feel nothing and am therefore less likely to wash. Have no proof that this is true for everyone but I'm fairly confident that if I had hidden cameras looking for violations I'd find more for people using gloves than not.
Also in a similar vain there's sushi
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/08/22/national/gloves...
There are plenty of other bad food regs
https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/11/americans-r...
https://www.foodandwine.com/lifestyle/why-americans-dont-get...
I'm American, and I'm pretty careful about those details.