Submitted by anogre8me t3_zvpi8q in todayilearned
Reply to comment by a_drive in TIL the FDA’s Food Defect Action Levels Handbook details the acceptable levels of contaminants of food from sources such as maggots, thrips, insect fragments, “foreign matter”, mold, rodent hairs, and insect and mammalian feces. by anogre8me
My favorite /r/kitchenconfidential moment was when the sub mocked me for suggesting that produce that fell on the floor could be washed and used safely. You know, produce. That stuff that literally grows out of the ground, which I can assure people is quite dirty.
Friendly reminder for folks that just because people work in kitchens doesn't mean they know jack about food safety. Sometimes I see people suggest that folks should ask food safety questions in that sub. You should not. Very definitely should not.
That's probably got more to do with the low cost of produce and high rates of drug usage in the average kitchen, better safe than sorry especially for a head of lettuce that costs a dollar or whatever.
Also kitchens are frequently greasy so it might not be practical to clean some types of produce.
Also shit that gets dropped often bruises and again, produce specifically tends to be a tiny fraction of costs.
I think I understand why the people at kitchenconfidential were mocking you.
Certainly many places have policies to not use stuff that's fallen on the floor. That's more laziness than anything else though. And sure, there may be quality issues that keep you from using something. It remains true that produce can be safely consumed after falling on the floor.
If your floor is so greasy that you can't wash a piece of produce that fell on it then your floor is the problem. Grease can be washed off though.
If someone thinks that produce can not be made safe by washing that is profoundly stupid. Don't defend that idiocy. Just mind bogglingly stupid.
Not sure what drug use has to do with anything though. Are you saying it's justifiable that people believe stupid things because they use drugs?
(TLDR because I started rambling, but short version is that most restaurants are required by health codes to not make an effort to salvage or clean dropped food items because of how profoundly stupid a lot of cooks can be, which makes washing unreliable as a policy, even though it absolutely can be done effectively)
It's less to do with what's actually, logically safe and healthy and more to do with health code regulations, rather than just laziness. Yeah, if you drop something on the floor and it's practical to clean it, you absolutely can clean it and continue to use it without getting anyone sick. Unfortunately, for restaurants, you've got health authorities who can absolutely shut you down if they find out you don't do everything by the book (which washing and using dropped things isn't permitted in a lot of areas), so for restaurants it's almost always less of a headache to just throw it out if it drops, especially when you have a large number of employees, some of whom definitely aren't bright enough to remember to lie to a health inspector if they're ever asked about what's commonly done around the workplace (and who aren't bright enough to properly wash dropped things in the first place even if it were allowed)
Also, and more importantly, r/kitchenconfidential is a weird competitive circlejerk made up of professional cooks who are constantly trying to prove themselves as better than each other. So of course they'd never drop anything on the floor, and even if hypothetically they did, then of course they do everything perfectly and by the book, unlike all the other hacks there who are clearly just posing.
Doesn't matter how clean it is, the traffic in kitchens will make it dirty pretty quick. I don't know of any kitchens that require their employees to change their footwear when they go to the restroom. Then they come back and walk with those same shoes that were walking through piss (men's restrooms) and walk about in the kitchen.
I mean a kitchen floor is probably more dirty than a field, no?
No. Not by a million miles. Not by a million billion trillion miles.
Kitchen floors are cleaned. Fields are not. Fields very literally can not be cleaned (because then it wouldn't be soil anymore).
What about other types of contaminants? I assume there are certain chemicals commonly found on kitchen floors that aren’t found in fields right
They're certainly different, but not better or worse. You do have to wash stuff that falls on the ground, just as you have to wash stuff that comes out of the ground.
A field is made of dirt
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