Do food safekeeping guidelines seem overzealous to you? (frozen, breakfast, meals)
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Well, it depends on if the mayo has raw eggs? Nobody uses real mayo any more anyway...Oh, I wouldn't leave seafood salad out, real mayo or not.
Well, I do. I never buy mayo, only make it, and it has raw egg. I've had the same batch in the refrigerator for a month or more and it has never gone bad on me. Never made anyone sick. Oil and vinegar are good preservatives, and there's a lot more of that in mayonnaise than there is egg.
But if you're talking about the normal store-bought mayonnaise, that is even LESS likely to go bad. Some people don't even refrigerate it.
When my family moved back to US from Thailand when I was a boy I discovered the glory of the mighty sandwich in USA. I remember early in the morning my Mom would pack a bologna sandwich with mayo and cheese for my school lunch. I'd take it in my Scooby-Doo lunch box and like the rest of the kids stash it somewhere until lunch break at about noon. 5-6 hours, no refrigeration, nobody got sick, no problems.
Fast forward 30 years and I had coworkers packing ice in their thermal-safe lunch containers just so their sandwich survives the 30 minute commute to work where it can be stored in the fridge.
I grew up with brown bag lunches that got stowed in a locker from when they were made at 7 a.m. or so until 11:30-ish at school lunch time, and this was in the 80s/90s, so the era of metal and plastic Aladdin and Thermos-brand lunch boxes at most...not the thermal lined, ice-pack friendly lunch containers ubiquitous today. As I escaped childhood unscathed when my lunchmeat sandwiches, clementines, chips, and Little Debbies remained at room temp in a metal locker half the day, I don't really sweat bringing lunch in non-insulated containers as an adult, either.
I say within reason. I don't make an egg salad sandwich with a side of cottage cheese, and a yogurt drink, and leave those sitting out in the hot sun for six hours and then eat them or anything. And I have my lines in the sand, certain foods I'm just not cavalier about, and will toss in a heartbeat rather than take my chances. But I don't sweat certain stuff being left out beyond what some people would probably deem a great idea.
I'm nowhere near to the point of my husband, who is MUCH more relaxed than I am on these things.
We also have chickens, and do not refrigerate eggs unless we wind up having to rinse them, which we don't typically do. Eggs are laid with a waxy coating that acts as a shelf stabilizer for up to a couple of weeks, depending on storage conditions, and we seldom have eggs that sit around longer than a couple of days. If we get an oversupply, we give them to neighbors. We also always write the date they were collected on them, so we can keep track of eggs in, eggs out. Commercially produced eggs for supermarkets are power washed, which removes the natural coating, so they have to be refrigerated. Farm fresh eggs do not unless they, too, have been washed.
I generally follow them. Bread that's a couple days beyond its expiry is edible. Most condiments are OK past expiry. I won't take a chance on dairy, meat, etc.
Food safety guidelines are set by the USDA, and they have nothing to gain financially, so I'm not sure why this is being referred to as a "marketing ploy." Here's the deal with them — they need to allow for the weakest possible consumers. Something that's been festering in the sun for a couple of hours might not hurt a healthy adult, but the same dish could make someone who's ill, maybe going through chemo, or a young child, a pregnant woman, and the elderly very sick.
OP, if your food handling practices have resulted in you getting sick two or three times, that should tell you something.
Lots of references to grandparents here. Mine were farmers who grew/raised/caught/hunted the majority of their food, and they were very careful about food safety.
It seems to me that it's just as easy to learn and practice good habits as it is not to.
ETA some of you are talking about expiration dates, which isn't the same thing as what the OP is talking about. This article does a pretty good job of clearing up confusion concerning "sell by" and "use by" dates:
Yes. Absolutely they are. I ignore these little "rules" and if it doesn't look or smell off then it's fine. Why should I waste perfectly edible food just because big money says I must?
Funny, you never heard about your grandparents or great-grandparents contracing ptomaine and dropping dead at the table from milk and dairy left sitting out on the porch for hours in the sun because they missed the milkman.
If by "ptomaine" you mean botulism, no. However they did die from bad milk. Botulism occurs due to improper canning.
"The United States itself has a long history of deadly foodborne disease outbreaks. Some of the deadliest outbreaks reported occurred in the early 1900s. Outbreaks in 1911 and 1922 were caused by streptococcus in raw milk and, when combined, resulted in 70 deaths and over 2,400 illnesses. In 1919, canned olives contributed to a severe outbreak of botulism; this outbreak forced a necessary change in canning methods to protect the public health."
"Never leave food in the “Danger Zone” over 2 hours. The “Danger Zone” is the temperature range between 40 and 140 F in which bacteria can grow rapidly. To keep food out of the Danger Zone, keep cold food cold, at or below 40 F, and hot food hot, at or above 140 F."
"Leaving food out too long at room temperature can cause bacteria (such as Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella Enteritidis, Escherichia coli O157:H7, and Campylobacter) to grow to dangerous levels that can cause illness. Bacteria grow most rapidly in the range of temperatures between 40 °F and 140 °F, doubling in number in as little as 20 minutes. This range of temperatures is often called the 'Danger Zone'."
I've had bad food poisoning too many times.
I would much rather toss out food that's been sitting too long than take the chance of illness.
Sure, you won't get sick 9 times out of 10, but that 10th one is awful.
Your food poisoning most likely had nothing to do with food sitting out, it probably came from the most common source, plants. Next common source, poorly cooked.
OP, if your food handling practices have resulted in you getting sick two or three times, that should tell you something.
It was 2 or 3 times out of 18 years of adult life! Or 30 years, if you count from age 6, when I cooked (not just assembled) my first dish. I think those are pretty good statistics. And the sickness wasn't severe, either. I felt like ___, no doubt, but nothing requiring a hospital visit. A couple doses of medicine took care of it.
It was 2 or 3 times out of 18 years of adult life! Or 30 years, if you count from age 6, when I cooked (not just assembled) my first dish. I think those are pretty good statistics. And the sickness wasn't severe, either. A couple doses of medicine took care of it.
If those stats are acceptable to you, keep doing what you're doing, then. Most people I know have never made themselves sick because of improper food handling procedures in their home kitchens, and those who have learned from their mistakes and changed their ways as a result.
Still wondering how the USDA is involved in a "marketing scam."
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